ifoAppleStore reports Apple will open a new Store in Anchorage, Alaska in September, making it the furthest-north Apple Store for months and years to come. The report comes after a job listing on Apple’s website that suggests the company is looking for retail staff in the Fifth Avenue Mall (Anchorage) location. The store, reportedly in construction at the second floor or the mall in a space left by Eddie Bauer at the end of January, will become the most-northern Apple retail store at 61° north latitude, 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

The website also notes the new Store will be geographically located “above” the current most-northern Aberdeen store in Scotland and any Scandinavian city that might be chosen by Apple in the future. That’s quite an interesting detail to share and, why not, it’s also pretty cool. Apple is also rumored to use other spaces in the mall for stock, offices and Genius rooms, although no official construction plans have surfaced at this point.

Apple may be planning to open the world’s largest Apple Store in Grand Central, but it looks like the company has some big plans for China, too. The Wall Street Journal reports Apple will open the biggest store in China in Shanghai – in Nanjing Road precisely – as the news has been confirmed by an Apple spokeswoman after an initial report from Beijing Youth Daily.

The Chinese newspaper reported Apple’s Vice President of Retail Ron Johnson said the company is looking for new locations to handle the traffic of Chinese Apple Stores – which apparently are visited by 40,000 people on average every day, four times the U.S. average traffic. Indeed, at the latest earnings call in January Apple confirmed four stores in China reported the highest revenue and highest traffic. Apple is clearly investing a lot of resources in China retail development with a new distributor set to open more than 500 retail stores.

Joining two stores each in Beijing and Shanghai, the Nanjing Road store will be Apple’s fifth in China, where the company has recently ramped up its retail presence. China is the world’s largest mobile market by number of subscribers and the second largest PC market, with more Internet users than any other nation.

Apple has previously said it plans to open 25 stores in China this year, but Mr. Johnson said the plan to open bigger stores may set this schedule back.

The new store is rumored to follow the other location in Shanghai to feature a unique design and experience, and we have no doubts Apple will put their designers and architects to hard work to build another impressive store to accomodate Shanghai’s heavy traffic.

Apple is having its well deserved success among enterprises and corporations alike, some say without even having a dedicated salesforce, but apparently that doesn’t stop the company from discussing iOS devices and Macs with interested business users in the so-called Briefing Rooms. What’s a Briefing Room, you ask? It’s a super-exclusive conference room that comes with high-end Mac gear, iPhone and iPad-controlled presentation monitors, large glass windows and lots of iPads on the table. The Briefing Room is typically located inside an Apple Store, but away from the chaotic showroom where consumers check out the latest iPhones and Mac accessories.

It appears that there are only five of these briefing rooms in the world, and Pioneer Press reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata managed to interview Apple’s Vice President of retail operations in the one located in the Uptown Apple Store in Minneapolis. In the past year, Apple opened other Briefing Rooms to lure business customers:

Apple has also opened Briefing Rooms in retail stores in London, Paris, Philadelphia and Shanghai. The secluded spaces are intended to whisk small-business executives and technology coordinators away from the often-cacophonous consumer showroom for heart-to-hearts about how Apple can meet their needs (and get them to drop megabucks on shiny Macs and iOS devices, of course.)

It sounds intriguing, if you ask me – and personally, I’d be curious to know the apps that run on those iPads to power conference note-taking and management. You can check out the full Flickr set here, and the original blog post on Pioner Press here. [via TUAW]

Two weeks ago, The New York Observer reported Apple was planning on opening a new store in Grand Central Terminal, the popular and crowded retail hub a mile away from the existing Apple Store in Fifth Avenue. Today, according to a rumor posted by Cult Of Mac, Apple is actually aiming at a September opening for the new Store, which will be Apple’s largest retail location in the world – even bigger than the Apple Store in Covent Garden, London, which  is about 40,000 feet.

Cult of Mac reports the store already has been provided the name “Apple Store, Grand Central”, and the main purpose of this opening is to take the pressure off the Fifth Ave. one and build an impressive store to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Apple Retail.

The Observer said Apple isn’t expected to take one of the traditional retail spaces, but will locate right in the terminal.

Our source suggested that Apple may be taking walls down — but didn’t elaborate.

The terminal sees more than 700,000 visitors a day, most heading for trains or subway. But about 250,000 come to look at Vanderbilt Hall or eat at the 35 restaurants, including the historic Oyster Bar on the lower level.

Apple has also been rumored to be considering a revamp of the current Palo Alto store and a launch of a new location in the suburbs of Paris.

With the recent popularity of the Mac App Store and continued success of iTunes App Store, Apple’s long term future sales for software are going to be digital distribution. MacRumors is saying that Apple is planning on making the move to all digital sooner that expected at their retail locations. They want to rid of boxed software and focus sales directly through the Mac App Store. Read more