Do you think Apple should sell non-Apple products in its stores? Why or why not?

The strategy behind selling non-Apple products in apple stores could be that:

• They want to diversify revenue sources
• They want to be a one stop shop for all items (say electronics)

BUT:

Considering Apple, their goals are very different. They picture their products on a different league than the competition, they avoid comparing their products with the competition rather compare it with their own product from the previous release.

Let’s look at what would be the pros and cons of the situation:

Pros:

• More revenue by commission from selling other brand products
• Attract more customers since they have more variety of options

Cons:

• Likely in a decrease of main revenue because people who would buy an apple product might buy a non-Apple product
• The walled garden of exclusivity of buying an apple product, the entire experience of the Apple ecosystem would have a huge impact negatively. This itself is enough as a reason to not sell non-Apple products in apple stores.

Thinking about it, there is an edge case as well:

How about the products which apple does not manufacture but is widely used by consumers with their apple products? For instance, headphones is something that is introduced recently, but before that apple was selling Beats headphones and sells even now because Beats has become a subsidiary of Apple. Similarly there are other products like a music equalizer for people who use macs for music production, they can be sold at Apple store. This will not only help Apple to gain some cash (also by charging more commission, marketing themselves as the high value brand and wealthy people would be buying the products hence the sellers are in profit only) and also benefit the customer to get all her required tools at one place.

There is also an advantage to Apple as they would have the data of products sold together, say the number of music equalizers sold with a Mac are high, Apple could use this as an R&D idea and enter in this market as well.