Filed under: Apple Corporate, Retail
Apple Store Beijing to open July 19
Last February, we forwarded a report on China's first Apple Store. At the time, it seemed the store would open on August 8th to coincide with the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics.This week, The Shanghai Daily is reporting that the Sanlitun-based store will open on July 19, with a second store also scheduled to open during the Olympic Games (in the Qianmen area). China is the world's largest mobile phone market and second largest computer market.
No official opening dates have been released, so please send us any specifics or spy shots you take. Thanks!
[Via MacNN]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Andrew Guan said 9:02AM on 6-30-2008
Go check the Apple Beijing Store photos here:
http://www.macx.cn/a/a.asp?b=4000&ID=610686
http://www.macx.cn/a/a.asp?B=4000&ID=610830
Go check the official report from Apple China website:
http://www.apple.com.cn/retail
This is the first Apple store in China, the second one will be open in the end of this year in Beijing, that one will be 3000 meter square! and that's the Apple Asia flag ship store!!
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Rhywun said 2:13PM on 6-30-2008
> the Sanlitun-based store will open on July 19
I hear that neighborhood's been "cleaned up"... When I visited a few years ago it was wall-to-wall bars, American men, and hookers. And it's kind of out of the way, isn't it?
The second store seems like a much better location.
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Brendan said 3:05PM on 6-30-2008
Rhywun - depends on when you were last in town, but you might not recognize the place now. It's still a bar street, but the more egregious offenders have all been cleared out, and it's recently gotten a new infusion of high-end shopping malls. Not exactly my idea of fun, but I'm sure some will like it. Sanlitun's hardly out of the way, though - in fact, it's quite central, smack between the old center of the city and the central business district to the east. It'll eveb be more easily accessible by subway, once the new line opens this month.
That said, the environment for the Qianmen store will probably be a good deal nicer.
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Rhywun said 5:04PM on 6-30-2008
I was there in 2001, and I arrived by taxi at night, so it seemed out of the way to me, plus I got no sense of what the rest of the neighborhood might be like - just one street of awful touristy bars. I had a much better time at "local" bars in the center of the city.
Brendan said 5:11PM on 6-30-2008
Ah, OK - yes, Sanlitun was definitely relatively out of the way in 2001 unless you were an embassy employee, but a lot has changed since then - particularly with the massive growth of the Central Business District to the east and south of the area. The general awfulness of the area hasn't changed much since then in my opinion, but it remains popular among expats and locals with too much money and not enough taste alike.
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