[dashiel]

this is pure speculation and has absolutely no basis in fact.

i think apple is severely constricting ipod mini availability everywhere but the apple retail stores. my sister called me this morning and asked if i would go with her to buy an ipod mini. i said sure, but let me call around because they're sold out in a lot of places.

i called all three apple stores in the area and all of them said nope we're out sorry. so i called compusa and the guy said they had them. we went down to the store, but no mini's were to be had. as we were only about 5 minutes from one of the apple stores i said, let's go check it out, i could have sworn i saw someone buying on there yesterday (lucky mum got a brand new imac, airport, wireless keyboard and mouse yesterday).

we walk in and ask about the mini. the salesperson says, "oh well are you on the waiting list?. no? okay well fill out this form. see we *just* got a new shipment in and maybe someone already on the list doesn't want it. what color do you want? alright let me go see if we have blue in stock."

30 seconds later he appears with a new blue ipod mini.

so the theory is. they can't say they have them on the phone, because it might raise suspicion and annoy other retailers. if you happen to drop by the store they feed you the line about "we might have one that someone doesn't want, do you want to put your name on the list?". if they have you in the store and willing to put your name/address/phone on a list, that is a significantly greater psychological commitment than saying on the phone "yeah hold one for me".

this benefits apple almost in every possible way; lets take a look at the person who goes to the store and gets the same story we did. they repeat the story to their friend who also wanted an ipod mini. now the friend drops by the store and the cycle repeats. it is a fair assumption that a significant portion of ipodmini buyers are not apple users specifically and not very computer aware in general. at the same time these people are very style/fashion concious. forcing them in to the apple stores exposes them to a whole range of stylish products presented in an environment that looks more like the gap than compusa (making it more accessible and less "nerdy"). they are also forced to use an apple computer and OS X to sign up for the waiting list., andi have yet to show OS X to a non-windows die hard who was not really impressed. i will not be at all surprised to see a statistically significant rise in CPU sales this quarter (remember that most of the stores are in high-end malls or hevaliy trafficked metro areas, people with disposable income) and an increase this year overall as people who didn't buy that day have the seed planted in their head that apple makes a helluva an attractive computer. financially it makes sense too, they have to make more profit-per-unit selling through the apple store.

if mini wasn't in such huge demand and such low availability (and the "we're out of stock line, just fuels that even more) this could be a risky strategy losing sales to the rio nitrus, but because mini has transcended geekdom and becom a fashion neccessity for the normal person apple has some nice leway for a few months here. about the only major downside would be if someone absolutely had to have a small form factor mp3 today and took the "no we're out of stock line" at face value.

[fizzlemynizzle]

so your accusation of apple stores being a scam is based on one story about having gotten to one 20 minutes after the UPS man?

[saranwarp]

I think you should read your last paragraph again...your counterargument makes a lot of sense.

[dashiel]

Originally posted by fizzlemynizzle:
so your accusation of apple stores being a scam is based on one story about having gotten to one 20 minutes after the UPS man?

you'll notice that i also called it a brilliant idea and prefaced my statements by saying they were purely speculative. perhaps scam was an incorrect choice of words but it was meant in the most complimentary way.

to address your point specifically though, wether the UPS guy showed up 20 minutes before is irrelevant. the sales clerk said there was a waiting list, but sometimes people on the list don't want the product when it arrives. in the time it took him to go to the back and come out with the ipod it would have been impossible to call even one person on the "waiting list". furthermore, as i stated i was at the same store yesterday afternoon when someone bought an ipod mini in front of me. as a final note, i just called the exact same store that i was in, not 2 hours ago and asked if they had any ipod minis in stock. the answer "no" and there wasn't even the offer of a waiting list.

now could they have received an order friday, sold out of the last one shortly after my visit sunday and then received another shipment 20 minutes before i showed up this morning, and then sold out again in less than 2 hours later, while also having someone on the waiting list give up theirs so my sister could buy one? anything is possible i suppose.

[action]

hi,

two points against why i think it's not an organized sales strategy from apple.

1. this would alienate the resellers and open apple up for another class action law suit.

2. the employees at the apple store might not know what is exactly going on at their store. if i call my apple store, i ask the for the mangager directly.

your scenerio i think is a function of a couple of employees not having all their facts straight. i don't think it's unreasonable for people to have ordered the mini and just decided not to pick them up when their time was due and instead of calling people, the store just releases the stock first come first served.

if apple wants customers to come into the store, they would not tell people over the phone they are out. they would tell people to come to the store in person to sign up for the wait list. the wait from apple is only a week. hardly an indication of artifically suppresed supply to drive demand.

just some thoughts.

chung lee