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Apple's grand store in China in the wake of William Barr's criticism
Apple is flexing its muscles in China with another megastor that was revealed on Friday. Located in Beijing's state-of-the-art retail area of Sanlitun, the outlet replaces and more than doubles the scale of Apple's first store in China at the same venue, which quickly created a controversy back in 2008.
The landmark building was reopened in the heat of U.S. surveillance of hardware ties with China. In a speech given Thursday, Attorney General William Barr criticized a number of American tech giants, including Apple, for breaking with China's laws. He called out Apple for being acquiescent to the Chinese Communists.
Apple has long relied on China not only for manufacturing partners, but also to generate revenue from the App Store (especially games) and iPhone sales. Nonetheless, local handset manufacturers such as Huawei — which launched the biggest store to date in June — have been chipping away at Apple's Chinese market share in recent months, putting the US company in fifth position with around 10% of overall shipments, according to Counterpoint study.
Barr lambasted Apple on behalf of the Chinese government for the yanking devices. The reasons behind such prohibitions may vary from muting important government infrastructure, such as the map used in demonstrations in Hong Kong, to narrowing the legislative loophole that culminated in the disappearance of thousands of unlicensed games in China.
The new store features Apple's first integrated solar array in China's retail store, allowing it to supply power to the store below, just like all of Apple's renewable energy plants worldwide. The organization expects to fund sufficiently renewable energy in China to fuel more than 450,000 homes per year. Over the last 12 years, the Sanlitun store has grown from 52 staff to 185 and has attracted more than 22 million visitors.
