AppleRetail
Latest
Apple planning May event to celebrate its 10-year retail anniversary
Get your glad rags out, because it looks like Apple's preparing to celebrate the 10th birthday of its first retail stores at the end of next month. Employees have been told they can't request any vacation time in late May, possibly because Apple's planning some sort of event to mark the anniversary. The first Apple Retail Stores launched on May 19, 2001 in McLean, Virginia's Tyson's Corner Mall and at the Galleria in Glendale, California. The Glendale store has even achieved cult status now with the store number designation 001. It is possible that the holiday blackout is due to a new product launch; new Sandy Bridge iMacs are due, and there's always the iPhone 5. However, the iMac doesn't seem special enough to stop all staff going on holiday, and the iPhone 5 now seems more likely for September. The most recent holiday blackouts were for the Verizon iPhone 4 and the iPad 2. If Apple is planning a birthday party for its retail stores, will you be going along? How do you think Apple should mark the anniversary? Let us know in the comments. (Edited to fix store name.)
Two new Apple Stores coming to Ontario, Canada
It's always nice when a TUAW reader tips us off to a rumor of a new North American Apple Store, and it's especially cool when the rumor includes two new stores. In this case, Canadian reader Noah let us know that he was looking at job postings on Apple's site and found two new stores in Ontario listed with the information "New Stores, New Opportunities." A quick look at the Canadian job listings for Apple retail stores shows that the stores will be in Waterloo (Conestoga) and Burlington (Mapleview Centre), Ontario. If you're a reader in the Waterloo-Kitchener or Burlington areas near Toronto who is looking for employment with Apple, this could be your opportunity.
Hong Kong Apple Store locations revealed
ifoAppleStore has discovered the locations of Apple's first and second Hong Kong stores. The first location is in the International Finance Centre on Hong Kong Island. The IFC comprises two towers that include office buildings, a mall and a cinema. The Apple Store will be located in Tower 2 and span 6,300 square feet. The IFC store will be open by year's end. The second Apple Store to open in Hong Kong will also be on Hong Kong Island in the area known as Causeway Bay. The Apple Store will be located in Hysan Place, an environmentally friendly block-sized building. The Apple Store there will span 20,000 square feet. According to the developers, Hysan Place is expected to be finished in the second quarter of 2012, which is likely when the Apple Store will open.
iPhone 4 to hit India via Bharti Airtel Ltd, Aircel
The iPhone 4 may land in India in the coming months according to a report from Reuters. Both Bharti Airtel and smaller rival Aircel confirmed they would soon carry the iPhone 4. Unfortunately, residents of India who want to mark a launch date on their calendar will have to wait as neither carrier announced an exact availability date for Apple's popular smartphone. The iPhone is not new to this country; previous versions of the iPhone are available from Bharti and Vodafone Essar. Apple's move to bring the iPhone 4 to India should help boost sales as the Indian mobile phone market is prime for growth in the upcoming years. Carriers are rolling out high-speed 3G networks, and smartphones account for a mere 5 percent of all mobile sales. A staggering 95 percent of cell phone owner are prospective future iPhone and smartphone owners. Overall, India boasts 800 million mobile phone subscribers. Bharti alone has 159 million, while Aircel has 53.5 million.
Apple set to open massive European flagship store in Liechtenstein
It may be one of the smallest countries in Europe, but Vaduz, Liechtenstein will soon host Apple's largest European flagship Apple Store. The store, which will be located adjacent to the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein (Liechtenstein's Museum of Modern Art) and open in September, will be even larger than London's 28,000 square-foot Regent Street Apple Store, measuring 43,000 square feet. The first floor will be dedicated to showcasing Apple products, while the second floor will be comprised of multiple Genius Bars and staffed by over 100 multilingual Geniuses. The third floor will reportedly be an interesting mix of technology and art, including what might be a shared theater/gallery with the Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein as well as a state-of-the-art digital library using iBooks sharing. The library was added to the plans at the last minute when Apple found out Liechtenstein is one of only two countries in the world with a 100 percent literacy rate (interestingly, this is probably the reason Apple is rumored to be requiring all future iBooks to be uploaded into the iBookstore in both English and Alemannic German).
Arkansas to get its first Apple Retail Store
This is going to make our readers in The Natural State very happy. Apple is set to open its first retail store in Arkansas. The store will be located in The Promenade at Chenal Mall in Little Rock, reports ifoAppleStore. While there is no hard opening date yet, all signs point to an October launch. In 2007, a year before the Chenal Mall opened, "Apple" was listed as a tenant, but the store failed to materialize by the time the mall opened in 2008, despite Apple filing for a building permit in November 2007 and posting job listings in January 2008. However, after new job postings for the Little Rock Apple Store surfaced last week, it appears the store is back on. After the opening of the Arkansas store and a store in Anchorage, AK in September, as MacRumors notes, there will only be six states in the US still without an Apple retail store: Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia and Wyoming.
Apple's rumored store plans for Grand Central not happening?
The New York dream of shopping for an iPad 2 on the commute to work appears to have come to an end, according to a report by The New York Observer. An anonymous source within New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) says Apple ended plans to open a 16,000 square foot high-profile store in the balconies of Manhattan's historic Grand Central Terminal last week. Rumors of an Apple retail store coming to New York City's Grand Central Terminal, often referred to as Grand Central Station, began in early February with a report by Laura Kusisto in The New York Observer. Grand Central Terminal appeared to be an ideal candidate for Apple's fifth Manhattan location. It's the largest terminal in the United States, with up to 700,000 visitors a day, and it already hosts 68 retail shops and 35 restaurants. At Park Avenue and East 42nd Street, the landmark terminal is less than one mile away from Apple's Fifth Avenue store, which draws the most traffic among Apple's four shops in Manhattan and sells more product than its three sister stores combined, according to ifoAppleStore. Presumably, the originally planned Grand Central location would have shared the incredibly heavy traffic of the crowded Fifth Avenue store. However, the complex and controversial process for applying for retail space in Grand Central may be responsible for undoing the deal, which never passed preliminary negotiations. Grand Central Terminal is classified as a historic landmark and tenants must sacrifice quite a bit of control to the MTA, including decisions about menu items, store design, architecture, lighting and store hours. Despite the excellent location and high foot traffic in Grand Central Terminal and Apple's proven ability to adapt its store designs to be more historically sensitive, it isn't in Apple's nature to give up so much control to another party. The New York MTA, Apple and Landmarks Preservation were not available to comment about the deal, but Executive Vice President and Principal of Newmark Knight Frank Retail, Jeffrey Roseman, appeared to confirm Apple's abandonment of the Grand Central project via Twitter on Thursday. "Lets see if Apple NOT coming to Grand Central, gets as much press as it got, when the rumor started," said Roseman. [via BetaBeat]
Apple offers original iPad donation program
With the successful launch of the iPad 2 behind us now, many original iPad owners who upgraded to the new tablet are attempting to "repurpose" their old device. For some, that's as simple as handing the iPad to a spouse, significant other or child. Others are having success selling their iPads through a variety of methods, recovering part of the cost of the new device. Apple now has a program that can match your obsolete iPad with someone who really needs it -- an educator in a low-income school district. Through a link on the Apple Retail web page, Apple is directing those who want to share the magic of the iPad with an appreciative audience to the Teach For America website. All you need to do is grab your original iPad and bring it to an Apple Store to donate it. The device will be prepared and delivered to a needy school district, ready for use by a teacher or students. There's no word on the Teach For America or Apple Retail web pages on whether or not your donation is tax-deductible, but you may want to check with the Apple Retail personnel to see if there's a form available for claiming that deduction. [via MacNN]
Apple may drop peripherals and some games from its retail stores
According to The Loop, quoting sources inside Apple, Apple Stores will be clearing out over 30 boxed games and some hardware items from retail shelves soon. The changes are the result of Apple wanting more room to help customers set up their new purchases, get email up and running, and basically familiarize new owners with their gear. To make room, Apple stores will drop printers, scanners and maybe even some hard drives from the display area. The items will still be in stock, but not out front where they take up valuable retail space. Most games are also likely to be dropped, with Apple retail employees suggesting the online Mac App Store as a good place to find them It's hard to fault Apple for these decisions. Most of the peripherals can be found at lower prices online. Getting people better and more personalized service seems like a good use of the retail space. The only caveat is that most of the stores are really noisy, and I'm hoping Apple can 'think different' about a way to reduce the racket in the stores so that training and setup can be a bit more pleasant.
Apple's Joint Venture small business service plan launches quietly
Apple's new service for small businesses moving to Mac, Joint Venture, appears to be off the ground. The service starts at US$499 for up to five systems, although complete pricing details are not immediately visible on the web page touting Joint Venture. So, what does Joint Venture provide for the small business that wants to buy Macs? Pretty much everything. To begin with, the Apple Store that you work with will set up all of the new Macs "usually within 24 hours." The setup includes moving data from an existing Mac or PC, and installation of any software that you purchase through Apple. Apple also sets up a unique Joint Venture page for your company, on which you can set up training for your employees, book appointments with a Genius or Business Specialist at the store, sign up for workshops or get tech support. The training consists of up to three two-hour sessions, held at the Apple Store, for your employees. The classes are rather general in nature, but according to the Joint Venture web page, the staff will work with businesses to customize the training. There are also Getting Started workshops held on a regular basis that are designed to bring new employees up to speed on using Apple products. As for tech support, Joint Venture gives business owners access to the Genius Bar via phone (or in-store visit). The service will even provide loaner machines while your computer is "in the shop." Like Apple's alliance with OnForce, the Joint Venture program has the potential to cut into the business of Apple Consultants Network (ACN) members. For many ACNs, the initial setup of Macs at a customer site is not only a way to gain revenue, but also provide training to new employees at a firm and integrate the new Macs into an overall system design. Troubleshooting and resolution of issues at a client's location is also the bread-and-butter of many ACN members, and now that service has the potential of being sidetracked by the Joint Venture program.
Apple to unveil JointVenture, a small business repair service
We reported last week that Apple had scheduled a meeting for all its retail employees. The meeting was held this weekend, and the Cupertino company reportedly used this meeting to detail a new enterprise-oriented service called JointVenture. The program supposedly targets small businesses and lets them purchase a premium repair and training service for $500 per year. It sounds vaguely familiar to Apple's ProCare service. For this sum, customers will reportedly receive priority Genius bar service, which pushes them to the top of the service queue and provides them with a loaner unit if a repair is to take longer than 24 hours. JointVenture customers may also be able to access a Genius-manned telephone support service and a limited number of group training sessions per year. The new service is rumored to launch on March 2 in the US and March 3 in the U.K. Additional details may be unveiled at Apple's March 2 event slated to be held in the Yerba Buena Center located in San Francisco, California.
First Hong Kong Apple Store to open this year
The South China Morning Post reports that Apple will open its first retail store in Hong Kong later this year. The International Finance Center (IFC) Mall in the central district of Hong Kong Island will host the new 15,000 square foot location. A second Hong Kong Apple store, a 20,000 square foot shop in Hysan Place in Causeway Bay, is planned for 2012. According to the Morning Post, Apple negotiated a 10-year lease for the retail space in the IFC mall. The company will spend an estimated US$20 million to construct its first store in Hong Kong and up to $9.2 million a year on rent. An Apple spokesperson told the Morning Post the IFC store "will be similar" to Apple's high-profile retail locations in London, Paris, and Shanghai. Located near two office towers and a soon-to-open Four Seasons Hotel, The IFC mall houses approximately 200 shops representing about 100 different international brands. Hong Kong is home to about 7 million people and hosts approximately 32 million tourists a year. Apple opened its first store in China in July, 2008. The four locations in China -- two in Beijing and two in Shanghai -- each receive over 40,000 visitors a day, says Ron Johnson, senior vice president of retail operations for Apple. That is four times the traffic to Apple's stores in the rest of the world. The company plans to open a total of 20 new stores in China this year. Apple has 323 retail stores worldwide.
Apple Retail's alliance with OnForce: A bad deal for consultants, consumers?
Apple Retail is changing the way that non-warranty support calls currently handled by certified Apple consultants are assigned, and that's making some members of the Apple Consultants Network (ACN) unhappy. In the past, a consultant who had gone through Apple's rigorous certification process and paid the annual ACN program fees could be interviewed by local Apple Store managers to be added to a referral list. If an Apple customer had an issue that could not be handled in-store by the Genius Bar, the store would provide him or her with a random selection of business cards from local ACN members who were on the list, and the customer could set up an appointment with the ACN. While this program worked well for many years, it apparently rubbed Apple Retail (the current organization behind the ACN program and the Apple Stores) the wrong way. They had no control over the rates charged by ACN members and also had no way -- other than by word of mouth -- to verify the quality of the work that was being performed by ACNs. That all began to change in 2009 when Apple began testing a new support structure that used an existing organization, OnForce, to distribute support calls to ACN members who wanted to sign up as part of the program.
Amateurs trump pros in predicting Apple's fantastic financial quarter
Now that Apple's 1st quarter financial performance has been revealed, it's time to revisit predictions made by amateurs and pros alike. Fortune's Philip Elmer-DeWitt did just that, and found that the novices out-guessed several high-priced heavyweights. Fortune has a system to rank the best and worst Apple analysts, measuring how accurately their predictions were across seven categories: Revenue Earnings iPhones sold iPods sold Macs sold iPads sold Gross Margins Of those, the unaffiliated analysts took the revenue, earnings, gross margins and unit sales categories. Conversely, the bottom 20 spots were held by folks working for brokerage houses and banks. Among the latter was Needham's Charlie Wolf, who missed the number of iPads sold by more than 2 million units. In Wolf's defense, none of us would have guessed that Apple would sell a staggering 14.8 million units. On the other side of the equation, Turley Muller at Financial Alchemist missed Apple's earnings by one penny, and Traderhood's Nicholas Mihalache was off on iPad sales by 0.76 percent. Clearly, they are clairvoyant. Congratulations for the sharp observers who rocked these numbers, and to Apple for giving them something to crow about.
Apple hoping to open Brooklyn store in Atlantic Yards development
Sure, Apple's Fifth Avenue retail store may be New York City's fifth most-photographed location, but Brooklynites need their Apple fix, too -- and it seems that Apple wants to be sure to take care of them. While not confirmed yet as of this writing, The New York Observer reports that Apple is looking at putting its fifth sixth NYC store near the proposed Atlantic Yards arena, a mixed-use commercial and residential development and future home to the New Jersey Nets basketball team in the Prospect Heights neighborhood in Brooklyn. According to the report, Apple has been in discussions with developer Forest City Ratner about moving into a retail slot, with an anonymous source saying that "they're focusing on the arena area right now, but there's no space. But it's the only place in Brooklyn that's super visible, close to trains and about as close as you can get to a 24-hour community in the borough." Apple currently has over 300 retail stores, but continues to open new locations both in the United States and abroad in places like Paris and Australia. With retail store sales still climbing, we can probably expect to see many more stores popping up in unrepresented corners of the world. [Corrected to note that the Staten Island store is officially a New York City store, meaning NYC already has five stores.]
Select Apple Stores to offer personal Mac setup service
Starting as soon as tomorrow in some Apple retail store locations, the company will be providing yet another service to new Mac owners to make their purchasing experience as painless as possible -- a personalized Mac setup service. With the service, an employee will sit you down with your new Mac, set up your email account(s), demonstrate the Mac App Store, set up your iTunes account and then guide you through some of the things that "make a Mac a Mac." This service is similar to the setup room at Apple's Covent Garden store in London, and is expected to become as much of a fixture in Apple Stores as the Genius Bar. While it's a plus for customers and a way for Apple to sell more Macs, it's also going to cut into the business of Apple Consultant Network members, many of whom have been relied upon in the past to provide setup services in the homes and businesses of new Mac owners.
Apple Store spotted covering up, but likely not for new iPhone (updated: no restocking fees, setup centers)
Hm, what product could make Apple cover the windows of a retail shop so soon after the holiday shopping season? Surely not the iPad 2. Maybe something that looks the same but works on a totally new network? You know, that Verizon iPhone that we've been hearing about for a few years now, perchance? Well, as it turns out, probably not. The above pic and another one posted on Uneasy Silence by way of TwitPic (dated January 9, 2011) show retail employees deploying the big black shroud to cover the store windows. The poster is from the UK, but no specific location of this store is given. Calls to several US stores said they are not covering up, and honestly, covering up (and closing a retail shop) for an entire day before a major announcement would be nuts. This cover-up is most likely for an already-existing product that is getting a new window display, which would be installed overnight. It happens frequently at Apple Stores, particularly after the holidays. Despite the unrelated cover-up, we're hearing that retail employees will have a meeting next weekend for the "red zone" -- a code name given to the sales area of the floor. We're also hearing of a possible new setup area, meaning you may see a part of stores set up strictly to accommodate new iPhone purchasers and get their phones activated. This would be great for Verizon customers suddenly flocking to Apple's warm embrace, yes? At any rate, it's more about the service than the product, both in the retail experience and on your network when you leave the store. Update: As 9to5Mac points out and we hear independently, starting January 11, there will be no more restocking fees. Perhaps this "test drive anything" policy is getting some big display announcement? That would seem apropos. Update 2: We're hearing the reason the windows are being blocked off? Retail employees are being trained on new "setup areas" that aren't for the Verizon iPhone, but for new customers who may be unfamiliar with Macs or iOS devices and would like to get things started with the help of a friendly Apple retail employee. Doing that now involves clogging up the Genius area in many cases.
Construction to begin on Apple Store in Bologna, Italy
Above is a street view shot of the site where Apple will be breaking ground on an all new Apple Store. It's right smack dab in the middle of Bologna, Italy, a place where I'd imagine you probably shouldn't believe anything you hear. According to the Italian La Repubblica, the store will take up two levels making up 5300 square feet, with one more level on top for Apple offices and meeting rooms. The store may open as soon as spring of 2011. There's another interesting twist here -- Apple tends to get most of its "pietra serena sandstone" floors from one specific quarry in Italy, which just happens to be about 38 miles from this location. Apple apparently makes up 20 percent of the revenue of the Il Casone stone quarry, located in the small Italian town of Firenzuola. No word on if the family that owns the quarry is doing anything different for this Apple Store, but it's nice that they'll have a place nearby to, you know, go buy an iPad and give some of that money back. [via ifoapplestore]
Personal shopping discontinued in Apple Stores
Apple retail stores are typically very busy places. While the staff are very helpful, customers generally have to wait around a bit before being served. Fortunately, Apple has offered a reservation system for services like the Genius Bar and training sessions. Unfortunately, one previously available service, personal shopping now seems to be gone. With personal shopping, customers could make an appointment up to two weeks in advance to have a staff member provide personalized assistance in picking out the right ways to spend money in the store. It's not clear why the service has been discontinued but customers can still get help with selecting the right Apple products. The only difference is that they'll now need to stand in line. Of course, good things are worth waiting for and who doesn't want to hang around the Apple store playing with iPads and Macs for a couple of hours?
Exclusive photos from iPhone 4 launch in China, new Beijing Apple Store
Our favorite blogger in China, Maik Lutze of SuddenlyBeijing.com, has provided TUAW with exclusive photos from the official Chinese iPhone 4 launch this morning (9/25). Not only were there lines for the iPhone 4, but there was a new Apple Store being opened in Beijing at Xidan's Joy City today, so he provided photos of the crowds on had for the opening: %Gallery-103229% This is the second Apple Store in Beijing, the first being the Sanitun store. Maik provided a batch of photos for TUAW of the iPhone 4 lines at this store as well: %Gallery-103230% The second Apple retail location in Shanghai also opened today. The new Huaihai Lu Apple Store is a two-story structure with the only curved window front of any Apple Store. Apple is really booming in the Chinese market, with a third Beijing store planned for Qianmen Street that will open this fall. [Shanghai store information via Shanghaiist.com, Beijing store info via Asia Blog]
