Opinion

I am halfway through Steve Jobs’s biography, “Steve Jobs: A Biography,” by Walter Isaacson, and up to this point in the book, Jobs mentions numerous successes: the Macintosh, Pixar, NeXT, iPod, iTunes, Apple Stores. You might argue that they all did not dominate their respective market space, but you have to give credit to the sheer number of products and ideas that he and Apple launched. Did you know that the industry predicted that iTunes would sell one million songs in the first six months? They sold one million songs in the first six days.

The Apple Store was ridiculed by numerous industry and business leaders, including Apple board member Ed Woolard, who is quoted as saying, “Gateway has tried this and failed, while Dell is selling direct to consumers without stores and succeeding.”

The New York Apple store on Fifth Avenue generates more traffic and sales per square foot than any other store in New York City. The Apple Fifth Avenue Store attracted 50,000 visitors a week in the first year. Gateway averaged 250 visitors a week. The Apple Store grosses more per square foot than any store in the world. And it grosses more in total absolute dollars than any store in New York City, including Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale’s.

The list goes on.

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