Apple stores raking in revenue
The engine behind the second-quarter surge was the iPad, which had people flocking to the stores, where they spent heavily.
How's this for a data point: Apple's retail store revenue increased 72.8 percent year over year to $2.58 billion in the June quarter. That means, according to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, that Apple Store revenue for that period was greater than the company's total quarterly revenue from the second quarter of fiscal 1996 through the fourth quarter of fiscal 2004.
The engine driving those rising revenues? The iPad, whose launch generated a 38.7 percent increase in visitors per store, a 52.9 percent increase in same-store revenues, and a stunning 106.3 percent increase in non-Mac revenues (click image to enlarge).
"Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, has often said the company is built on three legs--the Mac, the iPod and the iPhone," Wolf wrote in a note to clients. "We previously argued that the Apple Stores represented the fourth leg of the stool, given their outstanding success in building the Apple brand and in attracting Windows users to the Mac platform. However, with the launch of the iPad, Apple just added the fourth leg of the stool."
Or it began building a second one.