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Apple announced it plans to open 40 to 50 retail stores next year as the consumer electronics giant expands its reach to customers.

More than half of the new stores will be outside the United States, with new outlets planned in London, Paris and two in Shanghai.

Speaking ahead of a store opening in New York, Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, said the company expects the holiday selling season to be a good one.

Apple now operates 280 stores in 10 countries…

The stores posted revenue of $1.87 billion in the quarter, their highest level ever and up 9 percent from a year earlier.

Annual revenue per store is now around $26 million, Johnson said, or roughly $4,300 per square foot…

Apple arch-rival Microsoft Corp recently made a high-profile foray into retail, opening its first outlet in Arizona last month.

Asked about Microsoft, Johnson said, “retailing is hard … it’s nice to have a 10-year head start.”

Retail is very, very hard. A great deal of my business career was in wholesale and I could bore you to tears with the skills required to make that a success. Multiply the difficulty factor by 10 or more – for retail.

Disclaimer: Every few years I buy AAPL. Last couple times I sold it after I made 100%. I bought it last at $89 and I think I’ll hang onto it for a spell, this time.

Computer giant Apple will open its first French store beneath the Louvre museum on Saturday…

Apple’s French expansion will take place against an uncertain economic background, with consumer spending in France still volatile and supported by government measures such as the car scrappage scheme.

But spending on must-have gadgets such as the Apple iPhone has proven robust. France Telecom has sold 1.3 million iPhones between November 2007 and September 2009, while new entrants SFR and Bouygues Telecom have sold around 200,000 iPhones since France Telecom lost exclusivity in spring.

“We are highly confident in the French consumer,” Apple’s head of retail, Ron Johnson, told Reuters at an event in Paris to launch the store.

Microsoft opened a Cafe a few weeks earlier. They sell snacks and drinks and you can try Windows 7 – but they don’t actually offer any hardware or software for sale.

First and foremost, Steve Jobs is an entrepreneur. And that is how history will long remember him. Not primarily as a fiduciary or an institution builder or an administrator (though he has worn all those hats), but rather as an individual who relentlessly pursued new opportunities.

From the first Apple computers to the breakthrough innovations of the past eight years — the iPod, iTunes, the iPhone, and his Apple stores — he has chased new possibilities without being deterred by whatever obstacles he encountered.

Over and over again he has turned his eye and his energy — and at times, it has seemed, his entire being — to what might be gained by creating a new offering or taking an unorthodox strategic path.

That puts him in the company of other great entrepreneurs of the past two centuries, men and women such as Josiah Wedgwood, John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and Estée Lauder.

Each of these people — and especially Steve Jobs — has been defined by the intense drive, unflagging curiosity, and keen commercial imagination that have allowed them to see products and industries and possibilities that might be. Each of these individuals has also been extremely hardworking, demanding of themselves and others. All have been compelled more by the significance of their own vision than by their doubts.

If you’ve been around through the length of the Information Revolution, if you have wandered through the challenging halls of national and international commerce – and can see beyond the petty hurts and huzzahs of fanboize and anti-fanboize – you should find this article one of the most readable of the dozens being cranked out to greet the award.

Will a new gadget stick around? You can’t tell from its first act, but you might know by its second or third release. Or maybe its seventh. Consider two new follow-on performances in the wireless-phone industry: One broadens the appeal of Google’s Android software, while the other cements the irrelevance of Microsoft’s aging Windows Mobile platform.

The first item is Sprint’s HTC Hero, shipping Oct. 11 for $279.99 before a $100 mail-in rebate for new or renewing customers. It’s the first Android phone available here from a carrier besides T-Mobile. That alone is good news: Sprint’s data coverage vastly exceeds T-Mobile’s patchy service, and its prices beat T-Mobile’s, too…

The real star of the Hero, however, is not its hardware but its open-source software. Android…

The other, less impressive new phone development of the month is Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.5 — the company’s first big update to its mobile software since the iPhone arrived in 2007. You might think that two years would be enough time for Microsoft to respond to its new competitor, but you would be wrong.

As tested on an AT&T HTC Pure, one of a handful of devices with the new software…Windows Mobile 6.5 is a miserable mess. Slow, clumsy and ugly, it offers a few surface refinements of the iPhone and Android but little of their underlying elegance…

Windows Mobile 6.5’s new onscreen keyboard seems designed for a shrunken species of human, to judge from its tiny buttons. And its menus often reveals cramped dialogs unchanged from older versions of Windows Mobile that required using a stylus.

With all these issues, it can be difficult to see many people wanting a Windows Mobile phone now. But it’s even harder to imagine how long phone manufacturers will keep paying Microsoft for this software when Android is not just better but free.

I don’t think anyone has a mandate to help Microsoft sort their countless internal problems. I know from a few friends who were recruited by Microsoft – their reason for turning down the offer was always the same. They were expected to be so happy about working for the Prince that they should be willing to accept a Pauper’s paycheck.

Of course that’s an exaggeration. But, whether you’re in Redmond or Mountainview [or Cupertino], the characterization of Microsoft as cheapskates is as consistent as the pundits who whine about Google employees being overpaid and coddled.

Apple is the latest company to quit the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the technology company disagrees with the business group’s climate change policy.

“We would prefer that the chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a constructive role in addressing the climate crisis,” Catherine Novelli, a vice president of government affairs at Apple, wrote in a letter to the business group.

Novelli wrote that Apple resigned its membership in the business group “effective immediately.”

Last month three big power utilities, Exelon Corp, PG&E Corp and PNM Resources Inc, said they were leaving the chamber over the group’s stance on climate…

Bravo!

I admit it: I’m a bigot. A hopeless bigot at that: I know my particular prejudice is absurd, but I just can’t control it. It’s Apple. I don’t like Apple products. And the better-designed and more ubiquitous they become, the more I dislike them. I blame the customers. Awful people. Awful. Stop showing me your iPhone. Stop stroking your Macbook. Stop telling me to get one.

Seriously, stop it. I don’t care if Mac stuff is better. I don’t care if Mac stuff is cool. I don’t care if every Mac product comes equipped a magic button on the side that causes it to piddle gold coins and resurrect the dead and make holographic unicorns dance inside your head. I’m not buying one, so shut up and go home. Go back to your house. I know, you’ve got an iHouse. The walls are brushed aluminum. There’s a glowing Apple logo on the roof. And you love it there. You absolute MONSTER…

I know Windows is awful. Everyone knows Windows is awful. Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it’s there, and there’s nothing you can do about it. OK, OK: I know other operating systems are available. But their advocates seem even creepier, snootier and more insistent than Mac owners. The harder they try to convince me, the more I’m repelled. To them, I’m a sheep. And they’re right. I’m a helpless, stupid, lazy sheep. I’m also a masochist. And that’s why I continue to use Windows – horrible Windows – even though I hate every second of it. It’s grim, it’s slow, everything’s badly designed and nothing really works properly: using Windows is like living in a communist bloc nation circa 1981. And I wouldn’t change it for the world, because I’m an abject bloody idiot and I hate myself, and this is what I deserve: to be sentenced to Windows for life.

That’s why Windows works for me. But I’d never recommend it to anybody else, ever. This puts me in line with roughly everybody else in the world. No one has ever earnestly turned to a fellow human being and said, “Hey, have you considered Windows?” Not in the real world at any rate.

RTFA. Witty, bright, insightful on many levels – even if Charlie Brooker doesn’t answer all of his own questions.

The future Broadway (NYC) retail store now under construction at the angled intersection with 67th Street will feature unique architectural designs that will put it in competition for the most spectacular store in the chain. The steel-framed building has risen from the near-total demolition of a former two-level Victoria’s Secret store, with but a single wall retained to avoid city burdensome permit requirements.

Priced at over $37.9 million, the 75-foot wide storefront of the building will mimic the all-glass design of the Boylston Street (Boston) store, but with a twist–it will be slanted to mirror the angle of the two streets.

Topping of the building will be its most-viewed feature: a slightly-arched glass roof supported by steel arches, all reminiscent of the historic St. Pancras train station in London (UK). The roof will span the rear three-quarters of the retail space, providing light and an airy atmosphere to the interior space.

View aerial photos of the roof and watch a video.

These folks used a remote controlled miniature helicopter drone – with video camera – to overfly the construction. Good fracking grief!

As video game giants like Sony and Microsoft touted their new gizmos at the Tokyo Game Show this week, industry executives had more than the coming holiday sales season on their minds.

Apple’s recent foray into video games — with the iPhone, the iPod Touch and its ever-expanding online App Store — is causing as much hand-wringing among old industry players as the global economic slump, which threatens to take the steam out of year-end shopping for the second consecutive year.

Among the questions voiced by video game executives: How can Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft keep consumers hooked on game-only consoles, like the Wii or even the PlayStation Portable, when Apple offers games on popular, everyday devices that double as cellphones and music players?

And how can game developers and the makers of big consoles persuade consumers to buy the latest shoot’em-ups for $30 or more, when Apple’s App store is full of games, created by developers around the world and approved by Apple, that cost as little as 99 cents — or even are free…?

The concerns highlight an accelerating shift away from hard-core games, which have traditionally driven console sales, to more casual ones played on cellphones. Of the 758 new game titles shown at the Tokyo Game Show, 168 were for cellphone platforms — more than twice as many as in the previous year.

Apple did not participate in the Tokyo Game Show, which ends Sunday. But the company introduced a beefed-up version of the iPod Touch this month, explicitly comparing it as a gaming platform with the Nintendo DS and Sony PlayStation Portable.

I don’t know from gaming; but, I know a tad about marketing and design. At this point in time, I’d rather own Apple shares than Sony.

Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Apple boss Steve Jobs has made his first public appearance, after almost a year away from the limelight, at a product launch in San Francisco.

He last appeared on stage for the company in October 2008, since when he has been absent because of ill health.

The notoriously private head of Apple won a standing ovation as he walked on stage, after which he gave details about his recent operation.

“As some of you may know, about five months ago I had a liver transplant,” he told the crowd.

“So I now have the liver of a mid-20s person who died in a car crash and was generous enough to donate their organs.”

Mr Jobs then urged the audience to all become organ donors.

But it was not long before he got down to business…

He used the event to show off a new 64GB iPod Touch and an iPod Nano featuring a video camera, pedometer and FM radio.

Mr Jobs said the firm had sold around 100m of the Nano devices, claiming that it was “the most popular music player in the world”.

Mr Jobs said the firm had sold over 30 million iPhone handsets and attributed its success to the App Store which, he said, now has more than 75,000 applications which owners can download to their phone. So far, he said, there had been 1.8bn apps downloaded.

Worth a footnote in the history of this digital world so many of us utilize, live in to some extent. Some more, some less.