Town not big enough for an Apple Store? Don’t worry. If you have a Target, you might be getting the next best thing.
According to AppleInsider, Apple is planning to open new store-within-a-store locations at large Targets located in areas that don’t have enough people to support an Apple Store. Before, you could only buy iOS devices like iPods and iPads while picking up dish towels or a pair of gym shorts at your local Target, but now you’ll also be able to buy larger, more expensive items like MacBooks and iMacs, as well as other Apple accessories.
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Feel like you’ve seen this all before? You have: Best Buy already sells Apple products in special branded areas at 600 of its stores.
Apple’s apparently taking baby steps when it comes to this initiative, invading just 25 of Target’s 1,752 stores. If it does well and expands to more locations, it could be a boon for both Apple and consumers; despite the company’s ostensible ubiquity in urban areas, it has just 245 stores in the United States.
As AppleInsider points out, Apple’s list of partners has dwindled over the years. It initially had partnerships with Sears, Circuit City, Computer City and Office Max; it dropped those to focus on CompUSA, which in hindsight was probably not the best idea.
While the cavernous, occasionally drab interior of your standard Target isn’t exactly the space-age showroom Apple’s products are usually displayed in, partnering with someone that has seven times the number of retail locations you do sounds like a win-win.