Best Buy to Start Selling IPad in All U.S. Stores
Sept. 14 (Bloomberg) — Best Buy Co., the world's largest consumer-electronics retailer, plans to start selling Apple Inc.'s iPad in all of its U.S. stores on Sept. 26 to boost holiday sales, Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn said.
Context & Ripple Effects
The rollout completes a three-year loosening of Apple's channel discipline through Best Buy: the retailer first won an Apple TV exclusive in 2007, then pushed to get Macs into more of its stores in early 2008. When the iPad launched, Apple again turned to Best Buy rather than relying solely on its own retail footprint.
First-order effects
- From Sept. 26, every Best Buy U.S. location stocks the iPad just ahead of the holiday quarter, giving CEO Brian Dunn a premium traffic driver for a chain whose core categories face margin pressure.
- Apple gains thousands of additional sales floors overnight without opening a single store, extending availability well past its own retail footprint.
Second-order effects
- Every other big-box chain selling laptops and netbooks now faces the iPad on a rival's shelves heading into the holidays, forcing decisions on whether to demand their own allocations.
- Shelf space inside Best Buy becomes contested real estate: the iPad's display competes directly with the Windows machines and netbooks that anchor the store's computing aisle.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, tablets become a mass-retail commodity category stocked wherever electronics are sold, ending the launch-window era when a marquee Apple product was reachable only through Apple's own stores and one partner.
- Retailers' leverage shifts toward whoever controls the in-store demonstration and attach experience for post-PC devices, a capability Best Buy is positioning itself to own ahead of competitors.
The trend: Consumer computing is migrating out of Apple-controlled channels into mainstream big-box retail, with Best Buy as the proving ground for how tablets reach the mass market.