“Apple Store” in Dubai is “Apple shop”

An Apple shop is a designated area within a retail store that is not Apple owned or managed. Note the lowercase s in shop. With this definition out of the way, Virgin has gotten in touch with TNW ME for a clarification on the misinformation with a correction that the launch of March 16th was that of a shop and not a Store.

Virgin Megastore Regional Marketing Manager Tarek Moussawer clarifies,

“The Apple shop is a dedicated area within Virgin Megastore, devoted 100% to the Mac range; as opposed to an Apple Retail Store, which would be owned by Apple.”

Moussawer explained that the aim of launching an official Apple shop

“is to offer Virgin Megastore customers a first class shopping experience for everything Mac”

According to Virgin Megastore, the Apple shop has

“Mac Solutions Consultants who are trained experts, certified by Apple, who are on hand to show customers a range of Apple desktops and notebooks including the MacBook family, iMac and a Mac-compatible range of software and accessories. The Apple shop will host regular demos showing how to create amazing-looking creative projects on the Mac and customers can also get helpful advice”

While we are no longer disappointed with Apple on their not-so-grand launch of the Apple Shop, we are still quite unhappy that there is none in the Arab World yet. The Jerusalem store seems to be the only one in the horizon. Come on Apple!

Thanks to Yousuf Lootah for initially pointing out the issue and to Tarek Moussawer, Regional Marketing Manager at Virgin Megastore for the complete story.