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Gene Munster sees growth in China and India leading to a big future expansion, with Apple employing 80,000 customer service employees just at Apple Stores within five years.
In a blog post for his firm Loup Ventures, longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster on Thursday tackled the Apple Store. In the post, the longtime Apple analyst argues that the Apple Store is an increasingly important part of Apple's future — and that after crossing the 500-store mark earlier this year, it will reach 600 by 2023.
In the blog post, titled Apple Retail's Mission: Embodied Values, Munster writes that Apple's huge retail footprint gives it an "underappreciated competitive advantage," in that it's able to sell its own products in a much larger amount of stores than any of its competitors can.
After sharing some history about how the Apple Store grew and thrived as the rest of the retail industry collapsed, and how the in-store experience has evolved, from Ron Johnson's time in charge of the Apple Store division to the Angela Ahrendts era that began in 2014.
"Growth in new Apple stores will continue," Munster writes. "We expect Apple's store count to reach 600 locations in 2023, up from 511 today. The two biggest growth regions will be China (50 stores today) and India (likely announced within the next six months)." He went on to predict that Apple's retail employee count, currently at 65,000, will grow to 80,000 in five years.
Apple opened what was reportedly its 500th Apple Store in January, which was also its first in South Korea.
In the post, Munster also shares some "layers" of what he sees as important to the Apple Store's success. These include aesthetics, greeting and checkout, advice, support and inspiration. He went on to positively compare Apple's retail experience to that of other local retailers in Minneapolis.
Munster, long a much-followed Apple analyst with Piper Jaffray, started Loup Ventures in 2017. Recently, he's been looking a lot at the idea of "Apple as a Service," and how Apple's services business is going to become more important over time.
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18 Comments
Those of us who have been Apple fans (since 1982 for me) continue to be amazed at what the company has managed to accomplish in going on 42 years now. From a garage in Cupertino to building stores all over the world. From the first commercially successful personal computer to over a billion users of their products the ride has been both exciting and scary to witness and be part of. My own journey with Apple has been very satisfying for the vast majority of the time. Starting in 1982 with the purchase of an Apple II+, then an Apple IIe, an Apple IIGS, a Power Mac 8100, a Titanium laptop, a Bondi Blue iMac first generation for the youngest kid, a Bondi Blue G4 AGP Mac, a liquid cooled cheese grater G5 Mac (my one disappointment when the cooling system leaked and fried the power supply, but which Apple fixed out of warranty for free), a 2008 iMac, a late 2013 iMac, iPod 3rd generation, iPhone 6, iPhone 8, Watch. This Fall will be time to replace the iMac again and a new Watch might be in the budget.
Am I a fanboy? You betcha I am.
In other unrelated news, Gene probably owns many shares in Apple.
Please Apple ,open a store in Pakistan ,India or Bangladesh.
how close does everyone here live to an apple store....curious