Cui Lizhen, who lined up two days before Friday's opening of Asia's largest Apple store, was hoisted in the air by the company's retail employees and carried into the block-long outlet along tony East Nanjing Road. It was the start of a daylong pep rally that tapped into the yearnings of a new generation of Chinese consumers and signaled the emergence of a new center of gravity for the Cupertino company.

Cui had no words to describe the experience of entering the store with its circular glass staircase. "It's beyond description," the 27-year-old said.
Apple's fifth store on mainland China is big enough to handle as many as 40,000 visitors a day. It's located just a few miles away from Apple's 16,000-square-foot flagship glass cylinder Pudong store, which, like Apple's other nearby store in this city of 23 million, is unable to handle the crush of customers clogging their floors.

On Saturday, Apple plans to unveil its first store in Hong Kong, another ballroom-size outlet built to help the company overcome its biggest problem in Asia -- an inability to meet the stampedelike demand for iPhones and iPads. The latest retail extravaganzas are down payments on the investment Apple is making in the emerging economic giant, whose swelling ranks of ready-to-spend Chinese could one day represent a market greater than that of the United States.


Source : http://www.mercurynews.com/business/...nclick_check=1
Bharat Reviewed by Bharat on . Asia's Biggest Apple Store Opens In Shanghai Cui Lizhen, who lined up two days before Friday's opening of Asia's largest Apple store, was hoisted in the air by the company's retail employees and carried into the block-long outlet along tony East Nanjing Road. It was the start of a daylong pep rally that tapped into the yearnings of a new generation of Chinese consumers and signaled the emergence of a new center of gravity for the Cupertino company. Cui had no words to describe the experience of entering the store with its Rating: 5