Apple will open a store in the city of Perth (Australia) early next year, the first location in the western region of the continent. The exact location of the future store isn’t know, but it will definitely be in center of this coastal city of 1.6 million residents. It would be the sixth store in the country, fulfilling Apple’s recent focus on increasing the number of international stores.
E-mail this story
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
Two Sydney, two Melbourne, one Brisbane (area), would make the Perth store six.
Not much more for Australia. Adelaide is the only other population large enough to make it a definite location. Then only Canberra has more than 300,000. Gosford, Hobart, Newcastle, Wollongong are all much smaller. So with the exception of more stores in greater metropolitan areas, Australia is almost done.
Oops! Thanks for the correction to the number of Australia stores.
1.6 residents? what an odd population size, especially for a “city”
I have more than 1.6 residents in my home, can Apple please set up a store here? (The basement would be a good candidate, but I’m not going to launder all the black turtlenecks…)
I wouldn’t be surprised to see a store in Darwin someday. There’s traffic through that area and it would definitely give Apple exposure in a remote area of the country. Certainly not at the top of the list, though. I would expect stores in Adelaide and Canberra and maybe even Hobart plus more stores in existing metro areas first.
It will actually be store 7!
Two Sydney, two Melbourne, one Churmside near Brisbane (not opened yet), Robina on the GoldCoast would make the Perth number 7
And, yet, I still don’t have one in Little Rock, Arkansas, though it’s been slated to open for about two years.
And more of my money doesn’t get spent at your store, Apple. Get with it. Geez.
Even though it may not seem like it, Perth is actually a pretty prosperous town. A decent sized CBD, a fair number of good colleges, and the mining boom from a few years back had a big impact. It sounds pretty insignificant, but the largest Ikea in the Southern Hemisphere was just built here a year or so back.
It’s a good place to build a new store, though I’d say at most it could only handle two, maybe three stores (one in the CBD, one north of the river, and possibly one in the south).
Vic, i thought the Perth IKEA store was the biggest until I read Logan, IKEA was bigger, then a new one IKEA opened up in Sydney which was bigger again than the Logan one.
Anyway my bet is Apple will go into either 140 William Street in Perth (there is a pretty nice TOD office/retail development over the top of a railway line) Perth Underground – they have over thousands and thousands of people passing through there currently for people travelling on the train line services.
My other bet is the Apple store will sit in one of the other newer office towers being constructed.
Gah, at least we had the mantle for the biggest Ikea for a short while.
140 William actually seems like a perfect location, as it’s close enough to Murray St Mall that it will get a ton of foot traffic, but far enough away that Apple could get get decent floorspace. I wouldn’t mind seeing Apple set up shop in the old Dick Smith building on Murray St, just because the street is a bit more amenable to foot traffic, but on the flip side, it would have slightly less exposure than on William St.
Yeah, one of the towers seems like a safe bet as well. I’ve lost track of which developments are actually happening though, as it seemed like there was a ton of proposals about a year ago, but only a handful are panning out. That said, it’s cool to see the BHP tower is starting to make a presence, and the WIlliam St development looks pretty damn cool.
Depending on how the CBD store goes, and whether the expansion of Garden City pans out, I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple opened up a small store there.
{ 1 trackback }