Apple today opened the first of a series of stores planned for Paris. The first, located near the famous Louvre art museum, coincided with the release of the Musee du Louvre iPhone app showcasing among other exhibits, Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.
The Paris store, first reported in 2008, includes a 7,700-square foot two-story layout with diamond-shaped windows.
Apple will quickly open a series of stores in France, including a location in Montpellier in the southern portion of the country. By the summer of 2010, the Cupertino, Calif. company hopes to open its third location in France, near the Garnier opera house.
Ron Johnson, an Apple retail senior vice president, said France could witness the fastest growth of the company’s chain of stores.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
