Best Buy Is Selling Nearly as Many iPhones as Apple Itself
Apple's move to make Best Buy an outlet for the iPhone back in 2008 is proving a wise one — lucrative, too. — Over the past few years, the retail chain has become an increasingly important outlet for Apple, extending its reach and distribution via its 1,100 stores.
Context & Ripple Effects
The arc here starts with Best Buy's 2008 push to get Macs into more of its stores, which set up the retail relationship that made it an iPhone outlet in the first place. Four years on, that bet has compounded: per the reporting, Best Buy's roughly 1,100 US stores are now moving nearly as many iPhones as Apple's own channels.
The timing matters because demand is surging — Reuters reported in October 2011 that the iPhone was luring people to ditch rival phones — so shelf space at big-box retail is converting directly into share. Eight outlets including VentureBeat, MacRumors, and AppleInsider picked up the story within a day, a sign the channel-dependency angle resonated well beyond the Apple beat.
First-order effects
- Apple extends iPhone reach across ~1,100 Best Buy doors without adding retail capital of its own, while Best Buy captures high-traffic, high-margin smartphone volume during the post-launch surge around the new iPad cycle.
Second-order effects
- Carrier stores lose their near-monopoly on where Americans buy iPhones, pressuring carriers to defend their own channel with subsidies and promotions, while rival handset makers must chase equivalent big-box placement or concede floor space.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, premium phone distribution in the US settles into a three-pillar structure — Apple's own stores, carrier shops, and big-box chains — giving retailers like Best Buy durable leverage over which devices win visibility.
The trend: Smartphone scale is shifting US device distribution away from carrier-controlled channels toward big-box retail partnerships, with Apple's vendor-in-a-store model becoming the template.