It could be several years before India gets its first Apple store.
Apple’s retail stores bring in customers like no other retail outlet on the planet, and so it’s no surprise the Cupertino company is keen to build more of them. One possible market for expansion could be India, where Apple is currently forced to sell its products through distributors. However, one Indian retail rule, which states foreign companies must source 30% of the value of their sales from local firms, could stand in its way.
If you live in Paris, France, and you’re hoping to bag an iPhone 5 from your local Apple store on Friday morning, you may get there to find that it’s closed. Workers at two Parisian stores are reportedly threatening to strike over pay on what could be Apple’s busiest retail day in the company’s history.
After delays, Isis will launch its NFC-based digital wallet in just two U.S cities.
After months of delays, Isis has announced the debut of its mobile payment system. A joint venture by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon, Isis made news earlier this year at the Mobile World Congress in March, but has been pretty quiet since then. During that quiet period a number of other players in the mobile payment market have stolen the spotlight and announced major deals.
Apple is expected to eventually unveil its own mobile payment system, one that will most likely be based around the iTunes Store payment system, but hasn’t made announcements beyond iOS 6’s Passbook feature. Apple has also kept quiet about whether it will include NFC chips used in some mobile payment systems in the upcoming iPhone 5, which some analysts and pundits consider a barrier to entry into the mobile payment market.
The Veldstraat in Ghent, the location of Apple’s first Belgian retail store.
Apple has reportedly started work on its first retail store in Belgium, which will be located in the city of Ghent in the Veldstraat shopping center. The store is expected to open in late 2012 — in time for the holiday season — or in early 2013.
You can now speak to an Apple specialist without leaving the house.
The Genius Bar is a great way to get help and support for the problems you’re having with your Mac and iOS devices. The problem is, with only 375 Apple stores worldwide, you usually need to live close to a big city to be close to a Genius Bar. But that’s no longer the case, because you can now speak to am Apple specialist from the comfort of your own home, via the company’s online store.
I don’t use iCloud too intensively, mostly because I’d have to pay for extra storage and I already got 50GB on Dropbox. But if I were an Apple employee I’d probably use it until the wheels fall off because now Apple is giving all of their employees a free 50GB upgrade for their iCloud strorage accounts.
Big glass walls? Check. Wood product tables with open layout? Check. Minimalist design? Check. Retail staff wearing blue t-shirts? Check. This isn’t an Apple Store, though; it’s the newest Samsung Experience store that just opened in Sydney where visitors can play with all the greatest smartphones, tablets, and laptops on the planet made by Samsung.
The store looks a lot like the inside of the Apple Store that’s just a short walk away, but Samsung swears they didn’t copy Apple this time, or even look at what Apple was doing in the retail space. Right!
PayPal announced the biggest partnership yet in the U.S. mobile payments market today – a deal with Discover that will bring PayPal in-store payment to seven million locations next spring.
Business to business app development is likely to be a growing enterprise trend. Apple has a solution, even if it isn’t yet a perfect one.
According a study released earlier this month, Apple’s iOS is becoming the most popular platform for enterprise app development – with 53.2% of developers picking iOS for corporate app development compared to 37.4% of developers standing behind Android. RIM’s BlackBerry, the old guard of enterprise mobility, came in a distant fourth behind Windows Phone with only 2% of developers supporting it.
That’s great news for Apple and the iPhone and iPad in business and enterprise environments. Apple even makes enterprise distribution possible outside of the App Store. Mobile App Management (MAM) and enterprise app store solutions provide efficient and effective distribution and update methods for enterprise apps.
Business to business (B2B) apps and solutions, however, present a different kind of challenge – one for which Apple has a solution, even if it isn’t a perfect solution.
Every time you drop by your local Apple Store it’s probably crazy busy. Even when they haven’t launched a new product in months, the floors are always packed with people. Apple just opened its 374th and 375th retail stores this weekend in Canada.
While he was up in Canada, Jim Dalyrmple talked to Apple about the success of their retail operation and came away with some interesting statistics – like the fact that the genius bar services about 50,000 people a day, for over 18 million appointments a year.
