Half-way through the financial year, Apple's retail stores seem set to create new sales records as other high street retailers face falling sales and the credit crunch.
Apple launched its first Apple retail stores in May, 2001, entering the high street market in the same year Gateway began to divest itself of its own-brand retail shops.
Critics warned Apple would fail in the scheme.
David A. Goldstein, president of researcher Channel Marketing Corp. famously told Business Week: "I give them two years before they're turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake."
He was wrong.
Apple's retail segment returned $1.45 billion in its March quarter - up 74 per cent year-on-year and 48 per cent quarter-on-quarter, resisting the downward trend at high street retai
