At the very beginning of Steve Jobs’ keynote at today’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, he gave an update on the retail store operation, noting (to applause) there are now 80 retail stores. He told the software developers there are 20 million visitors a year, "looking at our collective products," and added that if they’re not selling in Apple’s stores, "We’re both losing, so let’s talk." He said Apple is selling $250 million a year in third-party products through the retail stores, and then showed photos of the Walnut Creek, Chicago, San Francisco and Ginza retail stores.

Analysis: For the past three financial quarters, Apple reported 4.3, 5.9 and 5.7 million store visitors. Adding it up, 20 million for the past four quarters would indicate there were 4.1 million visitors during the past quarter (which ended last Friday, I believe), which would be quite a significant 28% decline over the latest quarter (2nd qtr. 2004). Apple releases its quarterly financials on July 14, and we’ll know definitively then.