Best Buy To Sell The iPhone
Aug 13th, 2008 | By James Lewin | Category: General, iPhone, iPods & Portable Media Players 
Best Buy announced today that it would be selling the Apple iPhone, starting on September 7th.
It will be the first US chain, outside of Apple & AT&T, to carry the iPhone.
The deal is significant for several reasons:
- The iPhone will be available in 1,000 new locations;
- It helps prepare Apple for carrier independence;
- It has the potential to rapidly speed adoption of the popular smart phone;
- There is likely to be some iPhone “halo effect”, since Best Buy already sells Apple’s Macintosh computers and iPods.
This is good news for podcasting and new media.
While wider adoption may mean that the iPhone loses some of its caché, it also means more people using podcasts, viewing mobile television, using mobile social networking applications and doing mobile content publishing. The iPhone tops Flickr’s cameraphone list for a good reason; it makes it easy to create and share media.
I’m not sure if increased sales in the iPhone will equate to more podcast listeners. This would only be true if the person never had an iPod before. I don’t see the increase in iPhone sales reaching out to a great number of the “I never had an iPod” crowd.
Either way, this is HUGE for Apple. Many people haven’t had exposure to the iPhone because they don’t step foot into an Apple store or an AT&T store. This brings it into a place where MANY more people can experience the iPhone first hand. The sales of Samsung’s Instinct for Sprint have been through the roof at Best Buy. No doubt the iPhone will get a substantial boost as well.
If only they weren’t tied to AT&T until 2010…