Apple is set to open a new brick-and-mortar retail store at the Paradise Walk mall in China’s Jiangbei District of Chongqing, according to Apple’s official retail website.
The store will open at 10am local time on Saturday, July 26, and will represent the company’s eleventh Apple Store in China: the first of several that will be opening in 2014 and 2015.
It’s no secret that Apple’s making big efforts to crack the Chinese market, which high tech companies and manufacturers are viewing as a market equally as important as the U.S. market going forwards. A major step in this direction was the ages-in-the-making China Mobile deal — announced at the end of last year — which opened up Apple’s potential customer base in China to the 763 million users currently on the country’s biggest mobile network.
Apple’s continued Chinese expansion has also seen App Store revenue in the country increase by 70 percent in Q1 this year, according to app analytics firm App Annie, while the manufacture of the iPhone, iPad and other Apple devices bring billions of dollars worth of industry into China thanks to the manufacturing jobs they create.
That’s not to suggest that everything has been good, however. Earlier this month, the Chinese Government — through its state-owned China Central Television — labelled the iPhone a “national security concern” based on the fact that it can apparently be used to betray Chinese state secrets to the rest of the world.
But while this indicates that Apple’s expansion into one of the world’s most potentially lucrative markets isn’t going to come without problems, the aggressive opening of new Apple Stores in China shows that Apple’s not planning on slowing down this expansion, either.
