Today we get our first glimpse at Apple’s plans for that upcoming flagship retail store that we noted earlier this week was in the works for Stockholm, Sweden. The images come from a presentation by Apple (via feber.se) showing off a model and renders of what the new retail location will look like located in Stockholm’s high profile Kungsträdgården area.
Apple looks to be set to open a new flagship retail store in Stockholm, Sweden, according to a report from local news outlet Expressen. The report claims that Apple plans for the store to be similar to the iconic Fifth Avenue location in New York and that it hopes to open it within the next two years.
Apple’s rollout of the iPhone 6s/Plus beyond the dozen launch countries kicks off today, with customers in 36 more countries able to get their hands on the new devices. This follows Apple making SIM-free phones available in the USA.
The countries are Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Maldives, Mexico, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.
Those in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates will have to wait until tomorrow, while there’s a further week to go before sales open up in India, Malaysia and Turkey. Apple has promised that the new iPhones will be on sale in over 130 countries by the end of the year.
Apple sold more than 13 million iPhones in the opening weekend. If you’re still on the fence, some recent pieces that may help are my iPhone 6s diary, a video of the best 3D Touch features, plus a comparison video and opinion piece on the 6s versus 6s Plus.
Reports surfaced last fall that Apple was opening a new research and development office in Lund, Sweden, continuing a wave of new satellite locations outside of headquarters in Cupertino, California. Rapidus (via tech.eu) has followed up with a new details now claiming that Apple’s been building out operations in Lund over the last several months to develop ‘advanced mapping technology’ for Apple Maps. The ramp up of hiring at the Swedish offices focused on mapping comes four years after Apple bought C3 Technologies, which translated to Apple’s Flyover and 3D features in Maps.
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Apple has announced an expansion of its Apple Maps vehicle program, a fleet of vans equipped with advanced sensors collecting data for an improved Maps experience. Among the new locations, Apple will be bringing the vehicles to France and Sweden for the first time, while it also plans to survey a long list of new cities in the US and UK where it’s already started surveying.
We first reported on the project back in May, noting that Apple was gathering data to reduce its reliance on third-parties, including getting Google Street View-type images of storefronts and other 3D imagery.
For France, Apple lists the following areas already scheduled for surveying: Hauts-de-Seine, Paris (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th), Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne.
For Sweden, the areas the company plans to visit include: Malmö in Skåne County, and Stockholm (Bromma, Enskede-Årsta-Vantör, Farsta, Hägersten-Liljeholmen, Hässelby-Vällingby, Kungsholmen, Norrmalm, Rinkeby-Kista, Skarpnäck, Skärholmen, Spånga-Tensta, Södermalm, Älvsjö, Östermalm).
Apple has also added a number of new areas in the UK and US that it plans to survey from August 17th to August 30th next month. The full list is on its website here along with other dates scheduled for data collection in various locations.
The Apple Watch, originally launched in nine countries, hits seven more today – with a further rollout on July 17th. Apple has so far added the July 17th date to its websites in the Netherlands, Sweden and Thailand.
The countries going live today include Italy, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland and Taiwan …
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Sprint today announced that it’s expanding its free data roaming offer to a number of new countries, bringing its new total up to 22 locations around the globe.
New countries added today include: Colombia, Denmark, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, Paraguay and Sweden.
Those add to the full list of 22 supported countries where Sprint customers can take advantage of the International Value Roaming feature, which allows customers to use data for free when traveling to supported countries abroad.
The full list includes: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Russia, Sweden, South Korea, Spain and United Kingdom.
After expanding the feature to five new countries earlier this month, Apple today has again rolled out CarPlay to new countries. As noted on Apple’s iOS 8 Feature Availability page, CarPlay is now supported in Denmark, Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, and Sweden. CarPlay is available in 25 countries total with today’s additions.
Apple has today added 9 new locations to its Flyover feature in Maps (via MacRumors), including three in France, a landmark in Sweden, one in New Zealand, two in Arizona, and a couple more United States landmarks in Wyoming and Arkansas. Flyover allows users pinch to zoom and pan around high resolution views of more than a hundred different landmarks, and today’s additions bring the total number of supported locations up to 101.
Following news of a few new office openings outside of Cupertino lately, Apple has reportedly moved into office space in Lund, Sweden recently as well. The report comes from news agency Rapidus, which confirmed with the building’s owner that Apple is indeed moving in.
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NZ carrier Spark offers customers life-sized cardboard emoji characters to reserve their spot in line for iPhone 6
Apple’s second wave of iPhone 6 sales has just kicked off with customers in New Zealand getting access to the device through retail stores and online as we roll into the morning of September 26 in the country. We’re also approaching the launch in a total of 20 countries today as the device goes on sale the morning of September 26 local time in the following locations:
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Apple is about to roll out its Volume Purchase Program, which allows business and education customers to purchase and distribute iOS apps in bulk for deployed devices, into 16 new countries. Apple’s website for both the Volume Purchase Program for Business and for Education have been updated to announce the expansion and now list the following countries as coming soon to the program:
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Update: TNW confirmed with Apple that a total of 12 countries have received access to movies in the Cloud, while France is the only to get TV shows today:
Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden have all received the service, which allows access to previously downloaded movies. Apple confirmed with us by email that France was the only country in this batch to receive iTunes in the Cloud for TV shows.
As first reported by French website iGen.fr, Apple appears to be rolling out iCloud access to TV shows and movies in France. The feature allows users to download content purchased through iTunes to various Apple devices, and it has been available in the United States and elsewhere since 2011. The site first noticed access to the movies and TV show sections in the iTunes desktop app but confirmed the content is also accessible from Apple TV in the country.
As noted by TNW, a small number of users on Twitter are also reporting that access to TV shows and movies in the cloud is also now available in Holland and Sweden.
Other readers have said the feature is also available in Denmark, Greece, and Norway:
@9to5mac You can count Denmark among the countries where at least movies shows up in "the cloud".
— Jimmy Selgen Nielsen (@jimmyselgen) February 27, 2013
https://twitter.com/piratxmac/status/306775203080437761
It’s not clear if Apple has officially launched the feature or access has mistakenly been opened up temporarily. Apple has yet to update its iTunes in the Cloud availability page to reflect the rollouts.
We told you a couple months ago that Apple was likely planning its first retail location in Sweden after job listings were discovered on Apple’s website. There were reports at the time that the store would end up somewhere in Stockholm’s city center, but the exact location was otherwise unknown. Today, local reports from 99mac and others claimed Apple is now confirming to new employees that the store will be located in the NK mall in Stockholm. According to the report, there is also talk that Apple is planning more retail locations for Malmö and Gothenburg, and possibly a second location in Stockholm.
The Stockholm store increases Apple’s retail presence to 13 countries, and it is expected to open sometime in August or September. NK Mall has two locations in Stockholm and Gothenburg, with the Stockholm location alone receiving roughly 12 million visitors annually.
Yesterday, we reported that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission wants Apple to lose the “4G” marketing for the third-generation iPad, alleging it misleads consumers into thinking the device is capable of accessing 4G networks in Australia. Reports from ABC news quickly followed and claimed Apple would give refunds to customers and publish clarification regarding incompatibility with the Telstra network. Apple’s AU website now has “Ultrafast wireless” instead of “Ultrafast 4G” on the main features page, despite still advertising 4G as a highlight of the device through its international sales pages.
Now, authorities in other countries where the new iPad is not compatible with local 4G networks are investigating the issue. Authorities in at least the United Kingdom and Sweden confirmed they are considering investigations…
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Three in Sweden is having a “half price sale” on the iPhone 3GS “while supplies last”. The free iPhone 3GS with the 99 Kroners a month ($15.42) plan works out to about US$370 for the entire contract and that is before minutes and the unlimited Internet (throttled after 1GB) are considered. That is incredibly cheap.
In the US, the price of an iPhone 3GS off contract is still over $400 and we’re used to some of the lowest prices on Apple products globally.
The move would seem to indicate that the iPhone 3GS is nearing its end of life (EOL) and prices may begin to drop in other countries as well.
The Swedish carrier’s move is interesting because we heard a report last month that the iPhone 3GS would continue to be offered next year at a sub-$350 prepaid option alongside the ‘iPhone 4S’.
Updated: Denmark too!
Machine translated plan, below:
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