Five Apple Stores to Open in China in February

Apple continues to pave its way to further popularity in China as it announces its plans to have a total of 40 retail stores within the country in just two years.

According to Apple, it will be opening five new stores prior to the celebration of the Chinese New Year in the middle of February. Four of these stores will be put up in areas where the company will be reaching out to consumers for the first time. These new stores will enable the tech giant to have 20 Apple stores in China.

Looking into the role of China in Apple’ s financials, the country reportedly brought in roughly $5.8 billion in sales for three months until September 27th of 2014. Such number represented about 14 percent of the company’s overall revenue for that period.

According to Apple CEO Tim Cook, China may become Apple’s largest market for sales in the coming years.

The company has not gone into detail regarding the location of three of the new stores that will be opening next month. Nonetheless, local Chinese news service Xinhua stated that Apple’s jobs site for the country confirms that the tech giant is currently seeking employees for retail positions in 15 locations, Included on the list are Anhui, Hebei, Shandong and Inner Mongolia, which do not have Apple retail stores at this point.

China remains to be a growing market for the company where the continuously increasing portion of its revenues can be attributed from Asian retail and online outlets. Apple stores in China have been reportedly some of the fastest growing outlets for the tech giant as orders increased by approximately 80 percent in 2014.

Almost half of the country’s population uses the Internet, as pointed out by Xinhua, which then enables the official Apple site for China to be accessed by 632 million individuals.

In the United States, Apple will reportedly open a new store in Brooklyn, but no details about the development or opening date have been revealed. Reports indicated, though, that the company is on a long-term lease for a retail space measuring 20,000 square feet at 247 Bedford Avenue.

Once opened, this new retail store will be Apple’s seventh outlet within New York City, adding to the five current stores in Manhattan and one outlet in Staten Island.