Steve Ballmer was right when he said that the current Surface tablet sales were modest. At least that was proven by Gene Munster and his team at Piper Jaffray, who conducted a survey during Black Friday. The team spent around eight hours on Friday last week and monitored the shopping activity of a particular Apple Store and Microsoft Store at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. They found out that the Microsoft Store had lesser shopping activity when compared to the Apple Store. According to their survey, there was 47 percent less foot traffic at the Microsoft Store and that it was selling around 3.5 items per hour.
On the other hand, the Apple Store has shoppers buying around 17.2 items per hour and averaging 11 iPads per hour. “Despite heavy TV, print and billboard advertising for the new Microsoft Surface tablet, not one was sold sold during the two hours,” the firm said. However, Piper Jaffray added that iPad and Mac sales were lesser this year, saying that supply issues were the reason for the decline. “The positive take away was store traffic was up 31% y/y, likely driven by shoppers wanting to see the new iPad Mini. The negatives were that the most popular iPad Mini (16G) is in limited supply and Mac sales (~12% of revenue) continue to appear to be impacted by the iPad and a slowdown ahead of the new iMac,” Piper Jaffray explains.
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