[Spinal]

lol, Tim Hortons laps coffee sales vs other business, but thats not to say they have the best coffee.

mass marketing works if you can get your foot in the door, which they have done but it is a very risky tactic, especially if it doesn't go well from the start you can easily go bankrupt.

Ask how many PlayBooks are in stock. In the DC area almost every single Staples and Best Buy has PlayBooks in stock (I visit several each week for work).

Now go to any Apple, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack, and Target. Ask how many iPad 2s are in stock. In the DC area no stores have any - at all.

Wrong! (and i work at best buy + majoring in business so you really can't argue this one, or anyone else for that matter)

one of the main rules in any business with a hot product is simple supply+demand, and the relationship is inverse. so this is exactly what apple is doing, very high demand, very low supply. when ipads come into our store they do not come on our main delivery truck they arrive via Fedex straight from apple. and they send about 5-10 ipads, and not 5-10 of each model, a total of about 5-10.

to further this point, in our inventory system our 'max stock level' for any given item depends on how popular it is, and it is the vendor that sets this, apple has it set at 5.

RIM on the other hand does not restrict supply and we get weekly shipments of the playbook, which also come on our main delivery truck it was only for the launch day where they arrived via UPS. we've probably sold a similar amount of ipads and playbooks (overall) to date since their launch, due to apple restricting supply and RIM doing the opposite, now the better question is will RIM (because i know apple will) continue their momentum in sales.

apple knows people will wait (and from a financial perspective it is better to maximize revenue over a longer period of time rather than all at once) so this is why they only send us a handful at a time. apple probably has the best marketing team on the planet; look at launch day - 5pm (everyone was off work vs playbook launched at 7am for some silly reason) we could not give any specific info such as pricing or even put a demo of the ipad 2 out until 5pm (launch time) that day, otherwise we would've been sued for a loooot of money. apple even sent in mystery shoppers to see if we were abiding by the contract.

their marketing ploy has clearly worked, look at the lineups, the hype, the ' this vs ipad' videos/reviews and best of all; look at yourself.

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People love to gobble up marketing bs....