(Photo via Pablo Martinez Piles)

Before Peter Oppenheimer announced earlier this year his plans to retire, Apple’s CFO shared in a scheduled quarterly conference call that Apple Retail would continue to expand its global presence across 2014. Specifically, Oppenheimer shared that the company will add an addition 30 retail stores this year while remodeling 20 existing stores; more than half of this expansion would take place outside of the United States.

We’ve already seen examples of this happening in places like Turkey where Apple opened its first retail store in Istanbul at the Zorlu Center last month. The company has recently given its long expected Portland “glass box” Apple Store at Pioneer Place a proper opening date (Saturday, May 31st at 10:00 am). In addition to the massive new stores in Istanbul and Portland, Apple has also put up the gate seen above around a future retail location in Madrid, Spain, ahead of its anticipated opening next month…

Apple’s retail arm of the company has recently been introduced to a new wind of change, of course, as Angela Ahrendts officially joined the company leaving her CEO position at Burberry to lead the brick-and-mortar and digital stores as SVP of Retail and Online Stores at Apple.

We recently profiled Ahrendts’ transition from Burberry CEO to head of Apple’s Online and Retail Stores including her emphasis on China, mobile payments, and revamping the Apple Store experience since Ron Johnson and John Browett were at the helm of the ship. As we noted then, Apple current has ten official Apple Stores in China and expects that count to triple to thirty by the end of 2016.

Apple’s current Pioneer Place location Apple’s future Pioneer Place location (via Cabel Sasser)

Bloomberg recently sat down with Bohlin Cywinski Jackson Principal Peter Bohlin to discuss his role in architecting the original iconic Apple Store locations alongside Steve Jobs:

Earlier this year, Apple added to its list of international retail locations by launching its first store in Brazil. The grand opening of the store in Rio de Janeiro is said to have been attended by an estimated 1,700 people.

(Pioneer Place Image Credit)

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