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No recession at Apple's Fifth Ave. NYC store

According to public records, Apple is pulling in $440 million a year at the 24-hour Manhattan store.

Erica Ogg Former Staff writer, CNET News
Erica Ogg is a CNET News reporter who covers Apple, HP, Dell, and other PC makers, as well as the consumer electronics industry. She's also one of the hosts of CNET News' Daily Podcast. In her non-work life, she's a history geek, a loyal Dodgers fan, and a mac-and-cheese connoisseur.
Erica Ogg
2 min read

Apple's clearly onto something with its 24-hour store plopped down in a tourist hot spot.

The New York Post reports that as of sometime last year, Apple was pulling down $440 million a year in sales at its Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City. The numbers surfaced in the paper's investigation of empty retail space along Fifth Avenue.

Apple Store NYC retail sales
The Fifth Avenue Apple Store in New York City. Marguerite Reardon/CNET

Even if it is a high-end retail outpost for Macs, iPhones, and iPods, that's an impressive amount of money coming in when seemingly every retailer was clobbered by the arrival of the current recession. By comparison, the SoHo Apple Store rakes in about $100 million per year, according to the Post. And one of Apple's newest locations, in the prime shopping district of the ritzy California coastal town of Santa Barbara, is expected to pull in $20 million annually.

It's interesting insight into the company's flagship location, since Apple does not break out individual stores' take. The company did report in its second-quarter earnings filing that its 252 stores worldwide brought in $1.47 billion collectively for the quarter.

All of this explains why the company has not stopped investing in its retail presence. Apple's senior vice president of retail, Ron Johnson, said last week that 100 of its stores will be remodeled this year to allow for bigger displays and room for customer training courses.

The shopping frenzy at the tourist-clogged Fifth Avenue location isn't like to abate anytime soon, particularly if Apple releases new iPhone hardware next month, as is widely expected.