With the opening of Australia’s first Apple Store today it struck me that Apple seems confused about the size of its stores. Reading an article on The Age I noted that Senior Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson appeared to tell reporters at the media opening of the Sydney store that it was the second largest Apple store in the world, behind London’s Regent Street.

Thinking this was some kind of misunderstanding on behalf of the reporter I sought confirmation, didn’t take long to find another source of the statistic.

Although exact figures on the sizes of Apple stores are hard to come by, rough estimations would suggest that Australia’s first store is not the second largest in the world, in fact far from it.

The benchmark for Apple stores appears to be London’s Regent Street store which was expanded in size at the end of 2006, in the press release that followed Apple stated that the store was over 28,000 square feet but didn’t say how much over.

More recently Apple opened the Boylston Street Apple store in Boston, at the time stating it to be U.S’s largest Apple store and only trailing behind Regent Street. This stirred interest as the physical plot measurement for the Boston store is only 6,384 square feet, making the three story store only 19,152 s.f. at a stretch, we have to account for the size of walls, storage rooms and the staircase.

Elsewhere in America you have the Fifth Avenue Apple store in New York weighing in at around 20,000 s.f., the SoHo New York which is said to be 21,000 s.f. and we can hardly forget the most recent New York store in the Meatpacking district; the West 14th Street Apple store is estimated to be around 30,000 square feet although no official figures are available to back this up.

America also boasts the Chicago Apple store on North Michigan Avenue which is stated to be 24,000 square feet.

So now we know this, how does the Sydney Apple store compare?

According to official plans for the store the estimated square footage is 4,800 per floor, over three floors that is only 14,400 square feet.

Lets look at that in an easy to digest list:

  • 1. Regent Street Apple store, London - 28,000 square feet
  • 1. West 14th Street Apple store, New York - 30,000 square feet (estimated figure)
  • 2. North Michigan Avenue Apple Store, Chicago - 24,000 square feet
  • 3. SoHo Apple store, New York - 21,000 square feet
  • 4. Fifth Avenue Apple store, New York - 20,000 square feet
  • 5. Ginza Apple store, Tokyo - 20,000 square feet
  • 6. Boylston Street Apple store, Boston - 19,152 square feet
  • 7. Sydney Apple store, Sydney - 14,400 square feet

Either my figures are really far off the mark or somebody at Apple is lacking in Maths 101.

I have contacted Apple PR for further information but no doubt they’ll refuse.

Store sizes sourced from ifoAppleStore.com, backed up with some Google research.