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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

Our old exchange student from Turkmenistan insisted that there was an Apple store in a couple of malls in Ashgabat, but I showed her that Apple doesn't officially sell anything in TM. She sent me some pictures and it was a complete clone of the official Apple store. Down to outfits, displays, the whole thing. Selling brand new, smuggled in, iPhones/iPads/etc. It was wild.

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This was the case in China too until Apple heavily expanded there. There were many knockoff Apple Stores with slightly lower quality outfitting. Here's an "Apple Store" in Iran: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-tehran-iran-16th-oct-2014-...

There are still tons of fake apple stores in China. They're also in prominent places that you'd expect Apple to open, not in small side streets etc.

Apple has lots of authorized resellers. Apple’s official site has a locator: https://locate.apple.com/sales or https://locate.apple.com/cn/zh/sales.

Not being an official Apple Store doesn’t mean it’s fake, especially if it’s in a prominent mall or something.

I'm very well aware what they are. Authorized resellers are not supposed to look like real Apple stores.

If you see an "Apple Store" that looks real but isn't an official Apple Store then it's fake, or its an authorized reseller that if Apple finds out about them will lose their status as a reseller.

What a terrible site. It assumes I am only interested in sites near where it thinks I am. I type in “Cairo” and get no results at all. Amman comes out with a village in Wales.

Lol, I blocked the location request and it still limited my results to the region geolocated by my IP.

You'd almost think they don't want people to scrape where the authorized retailers are outside of their immediate location

There are no official Apple stores in Malaysia. But there are Apple "premium resellers" [1] who have shops that strongly resemble Apple stores.

The ones in Malaysia are sanctioned by Apple, since they appear on Apple's own store locator website [2].

[1] Google "machines malaysia" for example

[2] https://locate.apple.com/my/en/sales?pt=4&lat=3.160000085830...

This seems to be the case in many parts of the world. Here is a picture of an "iShop" store in Guatemala City: https://maps.app.goo.gl/GRuxFf5iupVfJApz8

And we don't necessarily need to step out of the western world to see it. I still remember Authorized Retailers in France before the expansion of Apple stores beyond the US. In Denmark, there is still exclusively these "Premium Authorized Resellers".

There's lots of them in Poland even though Apple now has official presence in the country(although online only, I don't think they have any official Apple Stores yet).

Well, yeah, maybe the furniture and interior design looks the same as in "real" Apple stores, but if you look at the sign outside of the store (can't link to the specific photo on Google Maps unfortunately) there's little danger of confusion...

strongly resemble is fine (maybe encouraged?). These stores do not claim Apple copyright and also advertise themselves as resellers. Also, being a premium reseller, they do handle warranty (regardless of whether you bought the product there, in another store, or from another country).

Do you know of any pictures of these Turkmen 'apple stores' online?

I don’t. I’ll ask her if her sister who is still in country can send her a couple. I’ll update the thread if I get any. It’s a very interesting place, it’s a shame it’s so closed off.

For the longest time there was a store in Akihabara Tokyo that wasn't a fake Apple Store, but really looked like it wanted to be one.

Sofmap Mac Collection, I think.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110426040855/http://www.mac-co...

I knew of a fake Ikea mini-store in Kiev in 2014.

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