Apple

Add electronics retailer Best Buy to the list of places you can get a used iPhone cheap.

Best Buy is now selling refurbished Apple iPhone 3G models at a $50 discount to brand-new, unused models, according to the Reuters news agency. The lower prices of $149 for the 8GB iPhone (normally $199) and $249 for the 16GB iPhone (normally $299)--with a two-year service contract with AT&T contract--apply to devices that were returned to the store within 30 days of their initial purchase.

The move comes a little more than a week after megaretailer Wal-Mart Stores began selling iPhones at $197 for the 8GB model and $297 for the 16GB model.

Refurbished iPhones are also available from AT&T, the sole wireless carrier for the devices. Apple itself has also sold refurbished iPhones in the past, but a check of its Web site shows no such offers at the moment.

Best Buy representatives were not immediately available for comment.

Update 11:05 a.m. PT: Best Buy put out its press release a little later in the morning. In addition to the pricing stated above, the company said that current iPhone users can upgrade to a "refreshed" iPhone 3G. It also said the refurbished devices are available now at 350 Best Buy stores and by the end of January will be available at all U.S. Best Buy stores that offer AT&T.

Best Buy will begin selling the iPhone 3G in September.

(Credit: CNET)

Best Buy stores will begin selling Apple's iPhone 3G next month, becoming the first national retail chain outside of Apple and carrier AT&T to offer the wildly popular device.

Starting September 7, the 8GB and 16GB iPhone 3Gs will go on sale at 970 Best Buy stores and 16 smaller Best Buy Mobile stores, the retailer said. The deal is a coup for the Richfield, Minn.-based chain, which has been expanding its wireless offerings and introducing cell phone departments to its U.S. stores.

"It solidifies us as the place to go for the cool stuff," Best Buy Mobile President Shawn Score told Reuters in an interview. "Our customers are looking for this product."

The new distribution channel could help Apple could help achieve its goal of selling 10 million iPhones by the end of 2008. Apple announced in July that it had sold 1 million iPhone 3Gs through Apple and AT&T stores during its first weekend on the market.

The move could also help more people get their hands on the device. An AT&T representative confirmed last month that most of the company's stores ran out of iPhones the first day the devices were for sale. The current waiting period for iPhones at AT&T stores is about 7 to 10 days for customers, the company has said.

In keeping with Apple's long-standing retail pricing policy, Best Buy's iPhone prices will mirror those at Apple and AT&T: $199 for the 8GB model and $299 for the 16GB model. Best Buy customers will also still have to sign a two-year contract with AT&T.

The distribution deal is an expansion of an existing relationship Apple has with Best Buy, which now sells Macs and iPods.

The iTunes Store is still the top destination for U.S. music shoppers, according to new data.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple is still the No. 1 music retailer in the United States, but Amazon.com's online store is coming on strong.

More U.S. music buyers are getting their music fix through iTunes than from any other source, according to data released on Tuesday by NPD Group. Earlier this year, Apple took over the top spot from Wal-Mart Stores, and it maintained that lead during the six months from January to June, NPD said.

Wal-Mart is still in second place, followed by Best Buy. Taking fourth place from Target was Amazon, whose own music store has been growing in popularity since it launched last September, perhaps in part due to its DRM-free stance.

A back order of MacBooks at Best Buy could be yet another sign that Apple has new notebooks around the corner.

Best Buy is showing a one- to two-week delay on both 15.4-inch $1,999 MacBook Pros--the exact configuration that was rumored to be on tap earlier this month--as well as 13.3-inch MacBooks. AppleInsider has also heard from a reseller who claims orders are "trickling in" in preparation for a new launch.

Signs that new MacBook Pros are around the corner continue to trickle out.

(Credit: Apple)

Rumors of new notebooks have been swirling for weeks as a confluence of different events point to the possibility of new MacBook Pros. Intel has new Penryn-class notebook chips out, which are starting to be adopted in larger numbers by PC companies. And Apple hasn't updated the basic design of the MacBook Pro in an awfully long time.

That doesn't necessarily mean that a new design is forthcoming with the next revision to the notebook lineup, but the new Penryn chips are almost a certainty to help boost the performance of the MacBook and MacBook Pro. There have also been rumors that Apple will bring the iPhone-like touchpad capabilities introduced on the MacBook Air to the rest of the MacBook lineup, which would require the inclusion of a new controller chip in the systems.

Apple tends to like Tuesdays as "new product days," a tradition that was recently upheld with the higher-capacity iPhone and iPod models introduced a few weeks back. Something is clearly brewing for the end of this month, with details on the iPhone software developers kit expected to arrive any day now, and now evidence that Best Buy is running low on MacBooks during a quarter that's almost always seasonally slower than the fourth.

Apple's store-within-a-store partnership with Best Buy is going to expand this year, according to Best Buy executives.

So says UBS analyst Ben Reitzes, who met with Best Buy during the Consumer Electronics Show this week in Las Vegas. Best Buy wants to have Macs inside 500 of its stores by February of next year, up from around 270 stores at present. The Blue Shirts already sell iPods in about 900 stores, but the Mac operation is a little different.

Best Buy allows Apple to set up its own retail space within its stores in an attempt to re-create the Apple retail experience inside of Best Buy. The strategy seems to have paid off for both companies, as Mac sales have risen sharply in the last year, while Best Buy continues to dominate the U.S. electronics retail market.

The less-heralded, but very visible, part of Apple's success over the past three years has been its retail operation, which no other company in this industry--save perhaps Sony--can match.

While other PC companies fight for space on the stark shelves of Best Buy and Circuit City, and smart-phone makers are mostly shackled to the carriers, Apple is able to define and control almost all aspects of how a consumer discovers, explores, and purchases its products. And the rise of that retail operation coincided nicely with an overall trend away from direct sales of PCs through companies like Dell to a preference for retail purchases, which even Dell has had to acknowledge.

Of course, Apple can't hope to match Best Buy's scale as the largest electronics retailer in North America, so these store-within-a-store partnerships are a good compromise. Apple gets to define how customers experience its products while gaining access to a broader network of stores in locations where Apple won't venture, while Best Buy gets additional foot traffic.

It will be very interesting to see if the two can keep that kind of special arrangement as Apple's Mac market share grows, one of just many challenges for Apple, as it scales that business. It's not hard to imagine Best Buy's larger partners, such as HP and Acer, starting to grumble about such an arrangement, if Apple starts taking more and more business away from them through these in-store partnerships.