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Apple shows off London shop

Jo Best silicon.com

Published: 18 Nov 2004 16:35 GMT

The official opening will be at 10 a.m. on 20 November. The store staff are gearing up for some considerably queuing -- when Apple's first Japan shop opened, some Mac fans slept outside for two and a half days and, by the time the doors opened, the queue was three-quarters of a mile long.

The first 2,500 visitors to Regent Street will be rewarded with a commemorative T-shirt and some will be offered the chance to buy a Lucky Bag for £250, with contents -- Apple and third party products -- worth £700 or more.

Apple's retail stores brought in $1.2bn for Apple last year, with 51 million people dropping in to the shops worldwide. Cupertino has opened a new retail shop every 13 days since the first store opened in May 2001.

And London isn't the only place Apple's got its eye on for shop space. Johnson revealed that there will be two more stores opening next year in the UK: one in Birmingham and one in the biggest shopping centre in the country - Bluewater in Kent.

Johnson also said there were more European stores planned but refused to give further details. "We clearly didn't come to Europe just for the UK," he said. "You'll have to stay tuned."