China Mobile Starts Selling iPhones
BOLDUAN: Welcome back. Let's go around the world now. Starting in Russia where President Vladimir Putin is visiting Sochi today, three weeks before the opening of the Winter Games. CNN's Phil Black has the latest on the ongoing security concerns there.</s>PHIL BLACK, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Vladimir Putin is in Sochi today to meet with Olympic volunteers. As the answer of citizens that will wear brightly colored uniforms across the city, helping visitors spreading the Olympics spirit. Putin's goal is to maintain a positive message about the games which are now just three weeks away. But Russia's final preparations continue to be shadowed with serious issues, concerns about security and the threat of terrorism, and ongoing international criticism the government here is deliberately encouraging intolerance against Russia's gay community. Back to you, Kate.</s>BOLDUAN: And in France, shocking new claims about the French president whose alleged affair with an actress may have gone on much longer than originally claimed. Here's Erin McLaughlin with the latest on that.</s>ERIN MCLAUGHLIN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: New details about French President Francois Hollande's alleged affair with actress Julie Gayet. According to the tabloid "Closer", the alleged affair is actually two years old. That they used to go away for weekends together to the south of France. Since the allegations emerged, a week ago, neither has confirmed nor denied the affair, but Gayet is not happy. She's suing the tabloid "Closer" for invasion of privacy. As for the French first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, well, she's still in the hospital suffering from exhaustion. She's told a French radio station that he has yet to visit her because they've barred him from doing so. Back to you, Kate.</s>BOLDUAN: Erin, thank you. And to China now where after six years of negotiations, Apple's iPhone is finally available for sale this morning. David McKenzie is in Beijing with more.</s>DAVID MCKENZIE, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Apple's done a major new deal in China with China Mobile. It gives them access to a possible pool of 700 million customers for their iPhone. It's so important that Tim Cook, the CEO, was in town to plug the deal. They hope that this deal could give them a competitive edge. Kate, back to you.</s>BOLDUAN: David, thank you.</s>CUOMO: All right. Let's talk a little business shall we? Poor earnings reports, a rash of store closings this week. What's that going to do? It's going to raise serious questions about the future of brick and mortar retailers, actual stores as opposed to online. Here's a take a look at numbers here. 2013 holiday shopping season, sales were up 3.8 percent. We have to dig down as Christine Romans tells us we must. These are the non-store figures, mostly online driving this, 9.3 percent. So let's bring it back to Christine Romans. Shall we? We have her in here. Because we see overall traffic down 14 percent. What are we seeing here? Sales are up, but it's where they're up, right?</s>CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: We're seeing a smart shopper, someone who looks online for great prices, maybe goes to the store first to see if they like something and buys it online. And that's a real interesting new scenario for retailers. You know, Best Buy's stock yesterday slammed down 28 percent, after it said holiday sales were weaker than expected. And the CEO there made it very clear, the Internet is cutting into foot traffic at retail stores.</s>ROMANS (voice-over): After a rocky holiday shopping season filled with heavily promoted deep discounts, some retailers now are being forced to close their doors. In the past week, discounter Loehmann's started liquidating. J.C. Penney and Macy's announced store closures and thousands of layoffs. And although their doors remain open, Best Buy says their holiday sales slumped. So much so its stock plunged 28 percent Thursday. Once staple at the strip mall, Filene's Basement and Circuit City are all shut down. So what happened to America's shopping habit? The internet. Shoppers are just getting smarter. They're show-rooming. Going to the store to see the item at brick and mortar stores and then looking for the lowest price online. And when shoppers do hit the mall, they're prepared.</s>UNIDENTIFEID MALE: I got all kind of coupons, $15 off this, you know, $50 off this and that.</s>ROMANS: That's squeezing profit margins. Traditional retailers extended holiday hours, but it's hard to compete with 24/7.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Toys "R" Us announced this week that its stores will remain open for 87 straight hours leading up to Christmas. Not to be outdone, the Internet will be open all the time always forever.</s>ROMANS: The results, online sales are rising, sales at physical stores falling. Retail analyst Burt Flickinger says the holidays weren't a total bust.</s>BURT FLICKINGER, RETAIL ANALYST: It's a tale of two different sides of retail. For luxury and off price, it was terrific. For Nordstrom's and Bloomingdale's and the other upscale department stores, Tiffany and specialty did extremely well.</s>ROMANS: Now, foot traffic for retailers over the holidays is half what it was just three years ago. That's according to ShopperTrak which monitors mall visits across the country. And, you know, guys, some experts think many of those shoppers will never come back. You know, shoppers want a lot. They want to be able to get what they want, not pay for the shipping, be able to return it. All of these are expensive changes. Retailers like Target and others, they do online and they do brick and mortar, but you have big competition from Amazon over stock and consumers are savvy and they want -- what they want cheap and they don't want to pay for shipping.</s>BOLDUAN: And they are making their opinions known. Everyone's calling it an Amazon Christmas.</s>ROMANS: That's right.</s>BOLDUAN: Thanks, Christine.</s>ROMANS: You're welcome.</s>BOLDUAN: Let's get to the weather. And, Indra, please tell me, are you joking about a blizzard?</s>INDRA PETERSONS, AMS METEOROLOGIST: No, ground blizzard since we talked about this --</s>CUOMO: What?</s>PETERSONS: We talked about this -- some of us are a little slow on it. We're not going to name names here. So obviously, we have some video for us today. We can actually show you what it looks like out there. So let's take a look at the video right now. If we have it. Do we have it? There we go.</s>CUOMO: I like the song. A flip song.</s>PETERSONS: All right. You only have like less than an inch of snow in Fargo, yes. Look at this, there is so much wind out there. Almost 70 mile per hour winds that you can't see. So that's why it's a blizzard because the visibility is still less than a quarter of a mile. So visual is always better explainer. That's what it looked like. Also show you another video, because we take you down towards Nebraska. And notice, same winds just as strong. So, there's no snow on the ground but rather some dirt, so you have a dust storm. Another way to look at it, may get a lot easier for you guys. We're going to show you. Again, here come the winds. So, if there's snow on the ground, you can actually see where the snow is. You're going to get a ground blizzard. If you go down to where there's dirt, you get a dust storm. See, I like this. I love when I have visuals to explain to you, guys. That's a little -- right here. All right.</s>BOLDUAN: -- dealing with these winds. Thanks, Indra.</s>PETERSONS: Sure thing.</s>CUOMO: So much clearer now. The visual made it much easier.</s>BOLDUAN: Exactly.</s>CUOMO: We're going to take a break here on NEW DAY. When we come back, the reality show, "Duck Dynasty" is back. The viewers, are they sending a message after the recent controversy surrounding patriarch, Phil Robertson? How will we judge? The ratings. They're in. we have them. We'll discuss.</s>BOLDUAN: Also ahead, a parking lot pileup. Why the driver of this BMW says he lost control causing the crash?