How Powerful is the Apple Store?

For those of us who live near one or more of the 272 US Apple Stores, they appear to be the mother-ship for Apple purchases, and Apple.com extends that reach. We’ve long cautioned against the conventional wisdom that Apple’s retail operation dominates sales of Apple products, however, and recent data from our current Apple customer research confirms that.

We analyzed Apple’s three dominant products: iPhones, iPads, and Mac computers. In the US, Apple’s retail operations (both physical stores and online) are the leading seller of iPads and Mac computers, but sell less than 40% in each case (Chart 1).