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Technology Stocks : Apple Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Eric L who wrote (70538)	10/30/2007 2:52:42 PM
From: inaflash	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213185

Nokia Flagship Stores << Nokia is in Shanghai first. Would be interested to see where the 7 open and 18 planned Nokia flagship stores are scheduled and how they compare Apple Store in size and locations. >> There are seven Nokia Flagship Stores currently open ... Moscow, Chicago, Hong Kong, Helsinki, New York City, Mexico City, and Shanghai. Next to open is the Regent Street store in London which will be its largest to date (1,000 square meters) followed by Sao Paulo in spring of 2008 (the 9th). Upcoming launches beyond that are planned for Paris, Madrid or Barcelona, Milan, Istanbul, Munich, Singapore, Dubai and Tokyo, with no further stores planned for the US at this time. The recently opened Shanghai Flagship store supplements 170 direct Nokia operated stores and more than 40,000 other retail outlets carrying Nokias on the Mainland. << BTW, who pioneered and/or popularized the "flagship" store concept? Niketown? Virgin Records? Sony? Disney? >> I'm not sure, but the base Nokia concept was suppoedly modeled on Niketown. Good info. Thanks. I don't think Apple is in all these international cities yet, so what this means is that there is plenty of international expansion in the next few years to go. One difference that Nokia and Apple have taken is that the "flagship" stores are anchors for their other stores and they're in direct competition with their own resellers. Other manufacturers/brands have sold the "flagship" concept to their resellers as win/win in that they advertise the brand without significantly cutting into those resellers. I thought that Apple wouldn't have a problem with about 10% of sales thru their outlets, but I believe they're now about 50%. Don't know how to model this, but they've definite taken opportunity away from resellers and benefitted from the growth as well as taken on additional risk in missing growth targets. Interesting how changing business models have made this possible. It's a little like the airline industry where Southwest has been able to control their customer much more effectively than the other airlines. The traditional travel agent is now an endangered specicies and even travel sites like Expedia/Travelocity have to compete with the airlines own sites. As far as I know, Dell is still very much direct even as they expand out and deal with value added resellers and eBayers. Interestingly enough, Crocs might be a very high % direct as well. I thought those folks in the carts in the middle of the mall were independent, but talking to one fellow, was told that they are "company stores". Very interesting how we've somehow seemed to achieve "one-stop shopping" while at the same time can deal directly with the manufacturer, stripping away layers of middle men and distributors.