Here’s a question for iPhone owners: where you guys buy your iPhones from? Chances are we will be getting a variety of responses, such as through online orders via Apple’s website, carrier websites, or even third-party retailers. There is also the option of walking into your local carrier and purchasing it from them, or drop by Apple’s own retail store. While the sales of iPhones is definitely no slouch, it looks like Tim Cook is hoping to switch things up a bit by trying to ensure that the number of iPhone sales from Apple’s retail website matches the number of iPhones taken into Apple’s retail stores for repair.
This is according to a secret meeting Tim Cook held with leaders of Apple’s retail stores across the world. Apparently as it stands, about 20% of iPhones sold are done through Apple’s official stores, while the remaining 80% are from other channels. However 50% of the phones brought in for repair, troubleshooting, or replacement are done through the retail stores and Cook is hoping to balance those numbers out. So why is this so important, you ask? After all sales are sales, right?
Well apparently the iPhone is viewed as a gateway product to Apple’s other products, such as iPad or their Mac computers, especially given how tightly integrated Apple’s software is, so by ensuring more sales are done through their retail stores, hopefully customers will be able to see the benefit of owning multiple iOS or Mac products and increase the sales in those as well.
Some incentives to get customers to walk into their stores to purchase a product include the recent Back To School promotion. Other methods to get customers to walk in includes a rumored trade-in program where Apple is said to be competitive in terms of trade-in value for older iPhones, even possibly allowing the upgrade to a refurbished iPhone 5 for a trade-in of an older and maybe even damaged iPhone model. What do you guys think of this possible move?
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