Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) Offers Big iPhone (Nasdaq:AAPL) Discount

The king of discounts Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is at it again, as right before the end of the Christmas shopping season they offered a $50 gift card to consumers buying an Apple iPhone 4 (Nasdaq:AAPL), which brings the price down to $197.

This is about the power of Apple products to drive traffic to stores and to sell ancillary products once consumers arrive to buy.

Apple is the top beneficiary of the practice, as they receive approximately $650 for each iPhone sold no matter what the retailer sales it for.

Because of the popularity of products from Apple, it's not real common for them be offered for sale, and even less common for the iPhone, as smartphones are the hottest items around, and sell with or without a discount, especially iPhones.

iPhones also drive the type of traffic to stores which buy up a lot of other items as well. It'll be interesting to see if Wal-Mart gets a nice spike at the end of December once the numbers come in.