May
26
We have received a lot of feedback on our initial survey about waiting lists for the iPhone at AT&T Wireless stores. We are re-running the survey now and asking a new question that some of our readers believed was important - “Is the retail outlet corporate owned or a franchise (agent owned) AT&T Wireless store. We did a little research to verify that AT&T (formerly Cingular) had agent owned or frachise retail outlets and it appears they do judging by this article on the transition to AT&T marketing.
We are about half way done with our 100 store sample survey. We understand that official policy says no waiting lists. We believe the waiting lists are in existence and happening because of the large number of eager buyers wanting to get a hold of the iPhone when it launches. We will also state that we do not know when the phone will launch but most AT&T Wireless store reps and most of the writing in the news suggests the phone will ship some time in June 2007.
We will post the survey when we complete it. We can tell you the early results show a significant number of stores still telling us that they do have waiting lists for the phones. Not all, but many. We will post on the full suvey when it is completed.
May
24
We have completed a recent survey on Peet’s Coffee & Tea (PEET) in which we asked two questions we thought relevant to the company’s performance in coming months.
We asked 106 Peet’s employees and representatives across the country. Peet’s has fewer than 150 stores in total so we ended up calling some stores more than once to ask our questions. First we asked employees if they thought coffee prices would rise in the near term. Second, we asked what the best selling drink was.
On the topic of coffee prices, 76 respondents said they did not expect coffee prices at Peet’s to rise. Several employees indicated that there were no internal memos indicating price increases and some employees pointed out that Peet’s has generally paid higher prices for fair trade coffee and is unlikely to be impacted by rises in mass produced coffee if that were to occur. It appears to us that the majority do not coffee prices increases for Peet’s in the near future.
Our second question on the best selling drink also yielded an obvious first choice. 40 respondents identified the Freddo line of specialty drinks (which happen to be the most expensive on the menu at up to $4.00 per). The Chocolate Caramel Freddo was mentioned most among the Freddo options and the hook with this drink is that the chocolate used is Sharffen Berger Chocolate, a gourmet out of Berkeley California (Home of Peet’s Coffee as well). Sharffen Berger has been a division of Hershey’s since 2005 but maintains its own branding and market positioning. The Freddo recommendations may reflect good corporate communication by all the Peet’s employees or the high priced specialty drinks may be flowing rapidly to customers which would seem good for Peet’s financial results. The second most popular response to our question about the top selling drink was Peet’s regular Anniversary Blend coffee or Arabian Mocha coffee.
May
22
Nintendo Wii Out of Stock Most Places. Average Wait - 2 1/2 Weeks.
Filed Under Video Games | Leave a Comment
We have recently completed a survey of video game stores (32) asking about the availability of the Nintendo Wii. 22 stores were out of the Wii while 10 reported they had the Wii in stock. The average wait for new Wii to be in the stores we called was 2 1/2 weeks with roughly 1/3 (11 out of 32) reporting that it would be 4 weeks or more before they had the Nintendo Wii game console in their stores.
The availability of the Wii remains an issue for continued strength for Nintendo focused games as the lack of consoles acts as the gating factor to more growth. Our previous and on-going surveys suggest that Microsoft Xbox 360 is benefiting from the production constraints on the Wii while Sony Playstation continues to see the weakest demand among the major console manufacturers.
May
22
iPhone Waiting Lists Grow; Manufacturing Glitch Slows iPhone Production.
Filed Under Cell Phones, Apple | 21 Comments
We ran a recent survey asking Cingular wireless stores when they expected to get the iPhone in their shops, if they had a waiting list and how many names were on it. The results were interesting to say the least.
On the first question, the expected arrival date for the iPhone at Cingular stores ranged from June 15th to July generally. Some respondents claimed August and “winter 2007″ as the arrival date for the phone. Apple has cited June 15, but rumors have swirled that this date may be pushed back a bit (we agree and will get to this topic in a bit).
Our second question about wait lists resulted in 64% of stores reporting a waiting list (We called 36 stores for this survey). The remaining 36% said sales were on a “first come first serve” basis. It was apparent to us that stores reps were keeping their own waiting lists as most are compensated on commission basis it makes sense to us that waiting lists would proliferate as the launch date closes in. So it appears that 64% of Cingular reps are industrious capitalists.
The average number of names on each waiting list was 25 people (there are roughly 10,000 Cingular Wireless outlets). We did have one outlier in New York City, which we excluded from our average, that had 1,979 people on its waiting list. Another store said “we cannot give out that figure but the waiting list is running into the thousands”, another store reported that the number of calls for the phone was “indeterminable” as the numbers were massive.
Our take on our quick survey is that demand for the iPhone is probably going to surprise even Apple fanatics in the early days. We expect sell-outs and complaints about lack of availability of the phone. On this point, we have stumbled across some info that leads us to beleive that HonHai is having trouble manufacturing to schedule and is running behind due to some part delays. It appears that the initial 12 million unit run rate will not be available by June 15. Get your iPhone if you can…
May
22
We’re back to stay.
Filed Under General Site News | Leave a Comment
Welcome back to thechannecheckers.com. We’ve moved to some professional hosting so our look has changed and our previous content won’t leave the mother server. So it goes.
We will begin posting meaningful content today and will continue at a much brisker pace than our previous site version. Comments and opinions are always appreciated.