Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray did a little survey on Black Friday at the Mall of America in Minneapolis and came up with some interesting findings. His survey compared sales at the Apple Store versus those at a Microsoft Store. His team spent eight hours counting heads at the Apple Store and this year also spent two hours over at the Microsoft store across the hall.
He came up with three major findings:
- There was 47 percent less foot traffic at the Microsoft outlet than at the Apple Store.
- Shoppers bought 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store and only 3.5 items per hour at the Microsoft Store. All but two of the Microsoft purchases were Xbox games.
- Shoppers at the Apple Store bought an average of 11 iPads per hours, while not one Surface tablet was sold during the two hours that Piper Jaffray spent monitoring the Microsoft store.
While Apple traffic was up from last year, sales of Macs and iPads were down from 2011, which Munster blames on supply problems.
The positive take away was store traffic was up 31 percent year-over-year, likely driven by shoppers wanting to see the new iPad mini. The negatives were that the most popular iPad mini (16G) is in limited supply and Mac sales (~12 percent of revenue) continue to appear to be impacted by the iPad and anticipation for the new iMac.
Despite Microsoft’s heavy advertising for the Surface tablet, it looks like the iPad is still on top.
Image Credit: The Register