Apple Store a Big Source of Cellphone Sales; Best Buy Is Key for Carriers
The carrier stores are still the dominant place for Americans to get their new cellphones, but two other retailers — Apple and Best Buy — have emerged as significant channels. — Apple, of course, sells only iPhones …
Context & Ripple Effects
The channel map behind U.S. phone sales is being redrawn around two non-carrier retailers. As far back as March 2012, AllThingsD reported that Best Buy was selling nearly as many iPhones as Apple itself, making the big-box chain a de facto Apple storefront; this follow-up confirms Best Buy has since become a key sales channel for the carriers themselves, not just for iPhones.
Apple's side of the story extends a run of carrier-level dominance dating to late 2011, when BGR projected the [[a:1193133|iPhone would make up more than half of Q4 smartphone sales across the top three U.S. carriers]] and Reuters noted buyers were ditching rival phones for it. Carrier stores remain the dominant channel overall — but Apple now reaches customers through its own stores, where every unit sold is an iPhone at Apple's preferred terms. Pickup across eight syndication slots on Mac-centric outlets shows how much attention the channel question draws among Apple watchers.
First-order effects
- Apple captures iPhone revenue directly through its own stores rather than routing every sale through carrier inventory and subsidies — a margin and customer-relationship advantage no Android vendor with a comparable store network can match.
- Best Buy functions as an extended storefront for all four carriers, giving the chains incremental activation volume they do not have to build real estate for.
Second-order effects
- Carriers' retail footprints lose some of their lock-in value as a differentiator: if shoppers will buy at Apple or Best Buy, the carrier competes on plan price inside someone else's store instead of controlling the point of sale.
- Best Buy gains negotiating leverage with both sides — carriers need its floor space for activations, while Apple needs neutral third-party reach beyond its own stores — positioning the retailer as a broker between the two.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, U.S. phone retailing structurally shifts from carrier-owned distribution toward manufacturer flagship stores plus national big-box chains, weakening the handset-subsidy economics that carrier stores were built to defend.
- An Apple-only first-party channel sets the template other manufacturers lack, widening the gap between vendors that own their distribution and those dependent on carriers and resellers.
The trend: U.S. cellphone retailing is diversifying away from carrier-store dominance toward a split between manufacturer-owned channels like Apple's and neutral big-box intermediaries like Best Buy, with iPhone strength accelerating the shift.