See the Apple Store's global expansion in time-lapse map form
In 11 years, Apple has gone from operating two Apple Stores to having nearly 400 retail locations across the globe. MacStories has taken data such as store opening dates, visitor numbers and sales figures and used it to created some great charts, including a particularly nice time-lapse world map tracking the opening of every Apple Store to date.
On it, you can see things like the average income per store and visitors per store climbing as time goes on, with a marked increase coming after the iPhone launch in 2007, of course. Other charts include a graph of store openings per year which shows that Apple has never cut the ribbon on fewer than 22 retail locations in a 12-month period. The largest number of store openings occurred in 2008 with 47.
Another set of data shows that last year's Christmas quarter was far and away the most profitable for Apple on a per-store basis, with each location taking in an average of $5.11 million. We're interested to see how this holiday stacks up, what with this year's availability of the iPhone 5, fourth-generation iPad and the iPad mini.
