Cape Town - Apple IMC Southern Africa, the sole distributor of Apple Computer products into South Africa, said yesterday that it would open another two Apple Centre stores in the country this year, bringing the total to four.
US-listed Apple Computers does not have a direct presence in secondary markets such as South Africa and Russia, but chooses what it calls independent marketing companies to import and sell its products.
Apple IMC opened its first Apple Centre store in the country about 18 months ago. Now there is one Apple Centre store at the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town and another in Sandton City in Johannesburg, with stores set to open in Clearwater Mall on the West Rand and another in Menlyn Park Shopping Centre in Pretoria over the next two months.
But Apple IMC's senior marketing manager, Steven Davis, said despite the fact that Apple IMC sold computers to other retailers, such as Incredible Connection, only the Apple Centre stores and a couple of premium resellers, such as Project 3 in Cape Town, were modelled on the 150 or so stores in the US.
Davis said the Apple Centre stores had the same standard as those in the US when it came to minimalist design, high service levels and free training.
He said sleek clean design lines chosen ahead of clutter in order to focus attention on the products and the training were used to introduce customers to technologies they were unfamiliar with.
Davis said in addition to the two new stores there would be an aggressive roll-out of a retail footprint in the country. However, he did not give details.
Growth in Apple product sales overseas had come from retail and "it is not rocket science to copy that here". But Davis did not give any figures relating to the business and, as Apple IMC is privately held, it has no obligation to do so.
He said there was a perception in South Africa that Apple Mackintosh computers were still incompatible with Microsoft software, but this was simply no longer the case.
Davis also said there remained a view in the country that Apple computers were for creative advertising agency types but that in fact Apple targeted all computer users from the middle market upwards.
He did not give a sales mix breakdown of computer sales versus iPod music player sales.