Breaking: Apple CEO Tim Cook Showed up in Beijing Apple Store

Guess where is Apple’s Tim Cook now? Obviously he’s not likely to sit tight in his office overseeing the innovator of iDevices since a Sina Weibo – popular Chinese twitter – post (link) broke that the head of the Cupertino-based company showed up in one of his five Apple Stores in mainland China at 11 this morning.

Tim Cook showed up in Beijing Apple Store(Joy City, Xidan)

According to the Weibo post, Tim Cook made an appearance in the company’s Apple Store in Joy City(大悦城), a shopping mall situated in Xidan, Beijing(北京西单). For those who’re no stranger to Beijing, you might wonder why Tim chose this one over the Sanlitun-based Apple Store which should be more appealing to Beijing’s expats for its location. Sanlitun is an area of the Chaoyang District, Beijing that contains many popular bar streets and international stores that foreigners frequent. So why this one? Well, opened in Sept. 26, 2010 with a sales of about RMB 380 million in its debut day, the Xidan-based Apple Store topped all the Apple Stores in the planet in terms of consumer traffic and transaction volume.

It’s known to all that Steve Jobs, the late former Apple CEO never made a trip to China, where most of the Apple devices are manufactured. Besides manufacturing, China’s growing buying power certainly contributes a lot to the iPhone maker’s stunning financial results.

Tim’s current trip might highlight that the company is attaching much more importance to the Middle Kingdom, which just overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy and was critical to Apple’s future growth, according to the company’s latest financial statement.

Also, there’re speculations that Tim came here to talk to China Unicom and China Telecom about introducing the company’s next generation of iPhone – iPhone 5 (or the new iPhone, who knows), according to people familiar with the matter. Currently, both Chinese operators are partnering with Apple in iPhone 4S.

taking pictures with Apple fans

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