Apple has launched a new online store through Tmall, a Chinese popular e-commerce site Tmall, reports the Wall Street Journal. Tmall, which is owned by the Alibaba Group, is already home to thousands of official retail outlets for other brands, such as Nike. The new storefront will not replace Apple’s own first-party store, but will instead complement it.
Like the store on Apple’s website, the Tmall store will be participating in Apple’s “Red Friday” sales event later this week. Unlike Apple’s eBay store in the United States, the Tmall site sells brand-new products rather than refurbished ones.
Apple has announced its “Red Friday” sale for the Asian online and physical retail stores. The sale will offer one-day discounts on Apple products, much like “Black Friday” in the United States, to celebrate the new lunar year at the end of January.
Apple hasn’t specified exactly what specials will be offered, but price cuts on Macs and mobile devices is the usual for these sales.
Signage for a new Apple Store in Brisbane, Australia has started appearing. The store will be located in the MacArthur Chambers building. The store doesn’t have an official opening date yet, but the second week of January seems to be a pretty decent estimation.
The new location will be the twenty-first Apple Store in the country. The new store will also help push forward Tim Cook’s vision of selling even more Apple devices through first-party retail stores.
Ifo Apple Store notes that this expansion will put the store at 7,690 square feet—more than double the size of the existing space—allowing more room for customer training that the current store does not have. The expanded store will occupy two adjacent spaces previously held by other retailers. Part of a third space is also being added to the store, though the rest of that space will remain unused.
Apple has plans to open thirty new retail stores worldwide in the coming year, which will bring the total number of stores to around 448, with stores in fourteen countries and counting. The company also plans to expand twenty of its existing locations.
Apple’s site confirms that its new store in Dusseldorf – its 13th German store – will open at 10am on Saturday. The first 1000 visitors to the store will reportedly receive an Apple t-shirt.
German site Macerkopf first spotted job listings for the store back in February following rumors dating back to May 2011.
The store is located in Dusseldorf Köbogen, a brand-new upmarket shopping center with stores featuring a number of luxury brands, at Königsallee 2.
Apple’s retail stores must qualify as one of the world’s most successuful risky gambles, earning more per square foot than any other retail company in the world – beating even Tiffany and Harrods. Apple has over 400 stores worldwide, and plans to open a further 30 next year.
The first gift to Apple Retail Employees was $10 off of a $50 iTunes gift card. This isn’t something to brag about considering a lot of stores offer this promotion frequently. Another gift Apple gives its retail employees is the ability to purchase third-party accessories at a steep discount, with new products being added to the selection each week. Apple has done this in past years:
Apple’s new senior vice president of retail Angela Ahrendts won’t be taking up the newly created position officially until Spring 2014, but in the meantime Ahrendts has already started the process of transitioning to a new CEO at Burberry. In a blog post on LinkedIn, Ahrendts talks in length about the following her intuition when deciding to take a new job at Apple, much like she had when first joining Burberry, and also outlines her plans for transitioning to new leadership. If you’ve ever heard Tim Cook talk about moving to Apple, ‘following instincts’ will definitely seem like a theme.
And as I look forward to what will define the next generation, I believe it is imperative that great companies add greater social value – the larger the company, the larger the obligation.
Ahrendts notes that the company has started transitioning to new leadership at Burberry in recent weeks and also describes some of her business philosophies in the process: Expand Expanding Close
Apple today posted a job listing on its website looking for a Payments Software Engineer that will “help build a next generation payment platform.” Apple says the payment system will consist of integration of payment devices, middleware and acquirers that will “push the boundaries in new markets for Apple Retail.” Expand Expanding Close
Starting this week the trade-in value for iPhones will no longer be impacted by the phone’s liquid damage indicator, according to Apple retail employees. Previously, if a device’s “liquid contact indicator” was tripped, the phone would be completely worthless as a trade-in under the company’s “Reuse and Recycle” program.
This week’s changes to the program, however, will allow more customers to trade in their devices. However, the company isn’t going to start allowing seriously water-damaged phones for trade-in anytime soon. If there is evidence of liquid under the phone’s display or corrosion in the ports, the phone will still be ineligible for any trade-in value regardless of what the liquid contact indicator looks like.
These changes are only valid in physical Apple Stores, so the new policy won’t affect online trade-in values.
Customers entering an Apple Store (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/klingon65/3840822757/in/photolist-6RpdN2-6RtfAW-6RJAHC-6TMNPK-6YaK9g-72ym3y-72ym69-76vgUH-76zcSC-7a46eP-7a46j2-7a46rZ-7a46vV-7a7VFJ-7bk1Cx-7dWBrd-7ebgkw-7fwqc8-7hjdSo-7pJoH8-7pJryH-7pNgDU-7pNhNW-7pNkxW-7rwhLM-7sVwEs-7tYcdD-bqqpoE-bqqqXs-bqqq3L-bDkiMB-bqqqwu-8gRXYQ-dDbgNk-crXJFW-dLxppW-co1G8N-dFMpEd-9SH1T9-bQrD92-aVVDhv-8gRXQC-8gRXR7-8gRXU7-8gNFZz-8gNFZV-8gRXSb-8gNG26-8gNG2H-8gRXTw-8gRXSw/">Photo by Gary Burke</a>)
iOS 7’s flashy launch earlier this year overshadowed a breakthrough new feature: iBeacons, a location-based technology with profound implications for industries such as retail. An iBeacon system could allow a store to install transmitters that would wirelessly connect to an iPhone and tell the phone its location with respect to items on shelves. This iPhone could then perform additional functionality if it is equipped with a specialized application. According to multiple sources, Apple is planning to soon enable just that in its retail stores… Expand Expanding Close
It’s not quite what you expect to see on those minimalist Apple Store tables: a stack of paper slips, a stapler and an old-school manual card-swipe machine – but that’s what some stores had to resort to after their Point Of Sale systems went down yesterday.
Store staff normally process sales with iPod Touches in cases which combine a cardreader with an external battery. Some customers were reporting that the system outage lasted several hours and affected their ability to collect their Retina iPad Minis, bought online with the Personal Pickup option.
The EasyPay self-service checkout app was reportedly still working, but Apple limits the value of transactions that can be paid for in that way.
Yesterday, some noise emerged that some Apple Stores are closing early under “special hours” on the weekend and days between November 17th and 19th. Several reports seem to be blowing this out of proportion and speculating that this indicates an imminent Apple product launch (like the Retina iPad mini or redesigned Mac Pro). Besides the fact that Apple would never launch a product on a Sunday night, these days are when Apple will be holding its quarterly, typically-boring store meetings for its retail employees. Nothing “mysterious” here…
Nov 17 update:
Some employees have had their meetings, and this is what they shared:
Users who have previously downloaded the free 30-day iWork trial and kept it on their systems found themselves able to update to the latest version of Apple’s productivity suite for free yesterday due to what is apparently a bug with the way the store finds copies of the software purchased through other sources.
Since the Mac App Store now detects boxed copies of iWork and allows them to be updated to the Mac App Store version, it seems the trial versions of Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are perceived by the App Store as being a full purchased copy. This allows users to install yesterday’s updated apps without having to pay anything.
As previously announced by Tim Cook earlier this year, Apple is preparing to open its first retail store in Turkey with a new store currently under construction in Istanbul. The Wall Street Journal reports that Apple has picked up around 21,000 square feet of space inside the Zorlu shopping center between Burberry and Louis Vuitton stores.
The store is expected to open in early 2014 and would make for the 13th country that Apple currently operates at least one retail store in. Apple now has over 400 retails stores worldwide and previously announced plans to open 30 new stores this year along with relocating 20 stores to bigger properties to accommodate customers.
Following the launch of two new iPhone models and iOS 7 earlier this month, Tim Cook today emailed Apple employees thanking them for working tirelessly on the new products and rewarding them with extra, paid time off for the upcoming Thanksgiving holidays.
I realize many of you worked tirelessly to bring us this far. I know it required great personal sacrifice…In recognition of your incredible efforts and achievements, I’m happy to announce that we’re extending the Thanksgiving holiday this year.
Cook announced that Apple will shut down on November 25, 26, and 27 so employees can have the entire week off for the holiday. Retail and AppleCare employees will continue to work on those days to serve customers, but they’ll get the additional, paid time off at a later date along with international employees.
And I am proud to tell you that Apple is also a force for good in our world beyond our products. Whether it’s improving working conditions or the environment, standing up for human rights, helping eliminate AIDS, or reinventing education, Apple is making a substantial contribution to society.
None of this would have been possible without you. Our most important resource is not our money, our intellectual property, or any capital asset. Our most important resource — our soul — is our people.
If you’re expecting to queue up to get your hands on an iPhone 5s like the many customers pictured below, you might want to get in line soon. We learned earlier today that retailers, including Apple stores, are getting little to no Gold and white iPhone 5s units, and will mainly have just the new Space Grey model available in store. However, as we’ve seen following launches in other countries today, the 5s in all colors seems to be in shorty supply even for online orders.
@varunkrish People in line at Apple store , Apple reps saying not more than 10 pieces of gold iPhone per store. That is pretty bad.
Apple is beginning final preparations to launch an iPhone trade-in program in its retail stores by next month, according to sources with knowledge of the initiative. This trade-in program will allow customers that own earlier versions of the iPhone, such as the iPhone 4S, to bring the phone into an Apple Store and exchange it for a new iPhone model, like the iPhone 5, at a discounted price…
Apple has poached Enrique Atienza from Levi Strauss, a global clothing sales powerhouse, to become a top director for its U.S. Retail market, according to sources with knowledge of the hire. Atienza served as Senior Vice President, Retail Americas and Global Store Operations at Levi’s, according to Levi Strauss spokeswoman Sarah Young. Young also said that Atienza recently left the company, but she would not confirm details regarding the transition or circumstances…
The iPhone Apple Store app has been updated over-the-air today to offer a free iBook download to customers. The book is Away in My Airplane by Margaret Wise Brown. According to a note sent to Apple retail employees today, the free book download is meant for employees to have context when discussing and pushing the iBooks app and iBookstore to customers.
The new book offer expires on August 28th, and it is exclusive to the United States, United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Sweden, according to an Apple employee.
The functionality works both in Apple Stores and actually if you are not in a store. A user just needs to pull up a store inside of the app’s store panel (see image above). When you click the free content option, you are taking to a screen to finalize your download.
We previously reported that Apple Store employees are instructed to install this application on a new iOS Device during Personal Setup (After a purchase). At an internal event in San Francisco last month, Tim Cook revealed that only a small percentage of Apple customers are aware of the app, but Cook wants to use the app as an element of his plan to boost iPhone sales in his stores.
A report by Hi-Tech Mail (via PhoneArena) indicates that the Russian cellular carrier Beeline (through parent company VimpelCom) has decided against renewing its contract with Apple, making it the last of the country’s three major iPhone carriers to do so. Beeline has made a deal to offer Samsung devices on their network in place of Apple’s smartphone.
Spanish news site El País reports that what remains of a 15th Century hospital wall have been uncovered in what will become the basement of Apple’s new flagship store in Madrid, expected to open by the end of the year. The 6000-square metre store will be Apple’s 11th store in Spain, and its fourth in the capital, Madrid.
The technology giant’s renovation of the building located at number 1, Puerta del Sol — formerly the Paris Hotel — led to the discovery of the outer walls of the Buen Suceso hospital, next to the church of the same name. Both buildings were demolished in 1854 to make room for the square.
The remains of the church were initially discovered during the construction of the new Sol Metro and Cercanías light rail station in June 2009, halting the project for 10 months. The ruins were subsequently preserved in the mezzanine of the station, sheltered behind glass partitions.
The permit to develop the site was issued in the knowledge that further ruins might be discovered.
Apple is said to have considered installing a section of glass floor to allow the ruins to be viewed in a similar manner to the rail station… Expand Expanding Close
Yesterday we reported that Apple is discounting select HP printers models in its stores for $50. This is an instant $50 savings and no rebate is required. We also reported that Apple would be heavily promoting Epson printers in its stores for the summer, but there had not been any indication of a similar sale for that brand. However, we’ve now learned that select Epson models will be reduced in price by $20 (image above). The sale runs until September 6th.
Apple CEO Tim Cook and his leadership team are moving to implement sweeping changes to the way iPhones are sold and marketed in order to deflect competition from smartphones running Google’s Android operating system. Hints of the new iPhones sales push were described at a secretive summit at San Francisco’s Fort Mason for Apple Retail Store Leaders from across the globe, according to multiple people familiar with the internal event…
