What the raunchy novel Fifty Shades of Grey did for retailers a while back, is being done by Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone in the 4th quarter. The erotic trilogy has dominated the e-book and paperback bestsellers list for a long time, selling more than 25 million copies. It came like a storm and boosted the sales of many retailers, including Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN). Even the sales of Kindle jumped as much as 71 percent, due to Fifty Shades of Grey obsession. The books helped BN first quarter revenues rise 4.6 percent to $1.45 billion.
“During the first quarter, we continued to see improvement in both our rapidly growing NOOK business, which saw digital content sales increase 46% during the quarter, and at our bookstores, which continue to benefit from the strong sales of the Fifty Shades series,” said the CEO of Barnes & Noble, William Lynch.
As reported in the blog, Tiny Bytes of Apple, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 5, which released on September 12, boosted the retail sales in September, and the trends are likely to continue in the coming months. The Commerce Department said on Monday that retail sales jumped 1.1 percent in September, primarily driven by a 4.5 percent growth in sales at electronic retailers. The economists attributed this growth to Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 5. More than 5 million units of new smartphones were sold within the first three days of its availability. The sales were so strong, the company was finding it difficult to meet the demands.
In fact, iPhone 5 went a step ahead of the Fifty Shades of Grey. The smartphone not only increased the sales at electronic retailers, it could boost the gross domestic product of the entire U.S. economy by 0.5 percent points, according to JPMorgan analysts. Chief U.S. economist Michael Feroli said, according to his calculations using the retail control method, the sales of iPhone 5 would boost the annualized GDP by $12.8 billion, or 0.50%. The air cargo companies also received a boost by carrying the smartphones across the world. Verizon Communications said its Q3 earnings jumped 16 percent, helped by the popularity of iPhone 5.
Forbes went on to say that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 5 sales will have a more profound effect on the U.S. economy than the Federal Reserve’s recent initiative Quantitative Easing 3. Well, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone is the Fifty Shades of Grey in the third quarter, and much more.
