Apple today posted a number of new job listings indicating that the company will be opening retail stores in various locations in Brazil and Turkey. The listings include full slates of retail positions in each country, including Managers, Geniuses, Creatives, Specialists, and business-focused staff.
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Apple's job listing for positions at Brazilian retail stores
Apple has been pursuing an aggressive expansion of its international retail store footprint, with 75% of the planned 30-35 new stores for fiscal 2013 being located outside of the United States. Sweden was the most recent country to gain its first Apple retail store with the mid-September opening of a Stockholm-area store, making Sweden the 14th country or region to host at least one Apple retail store.
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Manager job listing for Turkish retail stores
(Thanks, Alberto!)
Top Rated Comments
Sorry, but I couldn't disagree more. If you think people spend their hard earned money on very expensive Apple products (much more expensive then their prices in the US) just to show off, you have a very low, prejudicial and biased opinion on your compatriots. Perhaps, you might think we are not allowed to have premium technological products and should be satisfied with the kind of junk that we used to see around here before apple made a more consistent presence in our market. Nowadays, people all around the world are very much alike in terms of taste. Brazilians buy Apple's products despite their high prices not because they want whatever is selling in the US and want to show off, but because they have good taste and want the best product, much like italians, frenchs and americans do. I live here and I also see people all around in schools, universities, malls with their iPads and iPhones and I think it is just awesome! Perhaps, you think people should hide their products - please, don't bring your iPad, otherwise people will just think you are showing off, you are such a snob! Let me tell you why people don't do that: they just don't think people will interpret them the same way you are, because that is just a prejudicial way to think about it. To assume people are pulling their iPads from their back packs in a caffe just to show off says more about you than it says about them. Perhaps you have spent too much time in the US and think people in brazil don't have the right to own premium products because it somehow contradicts some subverted logic you have that just because you don't make as much money, you can't have this or that. They pay for those products more than americans and people from other countries do, that is a certain fact, all you have to do is visit apple.com/br and see for yourself. And if despite that we still buy those products, is because we can and earned that right.
And who is comparing Brazil to Germany or saying that Brazil is much richer than these countries? OF COURSE there is a lot of poverty, just like there is a lot of poverty in places like the US, Greece, Italy, France and Belgium (have you been to some banlieues in France, to Wallonia in Belgium or shanty hells like New Orleans or Detroit in the US?).
My point is that Brazil is ALREADY the 4th largest IT market, just like it is the 4th largest car market in the world. Does that mean everyone in the middle of the State of Amapá is able to buy an iPhone? Of course not.
But to say that Brazil doesn't deserve an Apple Store is to disregard even Apple Management's own assessments that the country is a major demand target.
So stop babbling nonsense or performing armchair analyses. I am Brazilian and I have also lived for many years outside the country for professional reasons - I know both the good, the bad and the ugly in my home country and don't need to spit out old "we are a developing country" stereotypes anymore.
As a Brazilian you should know better, then, instead of replicating mongrel dog complexes (i.e., everything Brazilian is bad, everything foreign is good). The middle class ALREADY has money to spare in electronic devices by the boatload - are Apple devices expensive? Sure. That doesn't mean there aren't at least 50 million people easily able to buy them in Brazil.
I am not a millionaire and have been several times to the shopping malls named above. Surely they are not for the poor strata of the society, but WHICH malls containing Apple Stores are, in the world?
Apple has ALWAYS targeted retail stores in upscale areas of any given country - do you see any Apple Store in Eastern D.C. neighborhoods? Never.
Same for China, which already has a bunch of official stores even though MOST of the Chinese don't even earn a buck per day.
An Apple Store in the best areas of SP, RJ, PR or RS is a logical and foregone conclusion already - just deal with it. As for Brazilians "showing off", this is normal behavior for a country which still deals with Apple devices as luxury items - once their prices reach normal, mainstream levels, they are gonna be a commodity just like any other appliance...and if they DO NOT reach lower prices once taxation goes down, it's simply because of a very basic principle of supply and demand: prices are set on the basis of how much people are willing to pay on average.
Go buy any clothing item in Switzerland, JUST to see exactly the SAME item being sold for half the price across the German border, even if production costs do not change - alas, people are still willing to pay more in CH.
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This sounds like good news to me, then - prices are decreasing even faster than I'd thought in Brazil. But are you talking about the iPad 3 or what?
Greece cant afford apple products right now :p
(... goes into hiding)
While you are at it, feel free to google "New Orleans" or "Detroit" as well.