“Apple may not give Black Friday discounts on its blockbuster devices, but experts say retailers like Target, Wal-Mart and Best Buy are turning to the iPad to attract customers,” Quentin Fottrell reports for MarketWatch.
“Among ‘door-buster’ widescreen TVs — many by lesser known brands — the major big box stores had generous deals on the iPad Air 2,” Fottrell reports. “Target offered the 16-gigabyte iPad Air 2 for $499 with a $140 gift card both online and in stores and Wal-Mart offered it for $489 with a $100 gift card as pre-Black Friday discount. Best Buy sold out online of the iPad Air 2 by simply knocking $100 off the original price. The iPad Air 2 (and Apple’s ‘Beats by Dr Dre Solo HD’) were the top selling items for Target online and in stores, a Target spokeswoman says.”
“Nothing gets consumers excited during the holiday season like an eye-grabbing discount on an Apple product, says Ben Arnold, industry analyst and executive director with The NPD Group, a market research company,” Fottrell reports. “‘The iPad is becoming increasingly important to Black Friday and Cyber Monday,’ he says. ‘Promotions like these are hard for shoppers to pass up as they combine a premium brand, a proven home run of a product and a good discount.’ Indeed, he expects iPad sales to increase by 50% year-over-year during Black Friday week 2014 — after sales for the iPad doubled year-over-year for the same period last year.”
Read more in the full article here.
What’s most glaring here is that none of those discounts actually affected Apple; all those iPad sales were still selling iPads at (or very close to) full retail price ($499), and the discount was offered as a cash-back by the retailer (either a store card, or a generic pre-paid VISA card). The pristine brand image of Apple remains unblemished.
Until those companies support Apple Pay, Amazon gets my money.
When did Amazon start accepting Apple Pay?
They only could in a retail setting, so for now they’re getting my cash. I hate Amazon more then the above mentioned companies, so it’s me voting temporarily with my cash in a tiny effort to get them to accept Apple Pay.
Amazon could accept Apple Pay in their app. They don’t. Target does in their app. Want to think again?
——RM
No I’ve already stated my opinion on the matter and it hasn’t changed. I want to wave the expensive phone I just paid for in front of an NFC Apple Pay compatible scanner at the above mentioned stores without logging into my phone and digging around for an app.
Society has reached a whole new level of laziness when consumers avoid stores because they find it’s too hard to pay the merchant the way we’ve payed for decades. If everyone thought the same way, the checkout counter would have 50 different payment methods, each tailored to the narrow views of religious tech nuts.
Apple Pay is nice. It is not taking over the world, nor should it. We will always have other options, thank goodness.
Did you entirely miss the security aspect of Apple Pay? That’s why I want it, and unfortunately my credit union hasn’t gotten on board yet.
Dear pinhead, it’s about security.
And if you left Target, and instead bought your stuff at, say, Walgreens (if that was possible), I’d get it. But you’re not doing that. You’re shopping online. And if you go online, shouldn’t you patronize a store that supports Apple Pay online?
——RM
Target supports Apple Pay in their App, their stores need to upgrade,( yet again, as I don’t think there current terminals are all that old,) their terminals to support NFC to support Apple Pay at the check out line.. They should probably replace them all anyway, if those are one’s with embedded Windows, they are still asking for security problems.
I thought Target was one of the CurrentC gang who’ve made a pact never to allow any mobile payment method that involves credit cards.
——RM