The new Waterloo location (at the Conestoga Mall) seems significant, considering that the city’s biggest claim to fame is being the home of RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphones and software. Apple’s other stores in Canada to date have generally been located either in major urban centers, or in communities bordering such metropolitan areas. Waterloo, a university town with a reputation for being Canada’s Silicon Valley, thanks in large part to RIM’s presence there, still only has a population of 98,000, swelling to around 120,000 during the post-secondary school year. Apple’s first Canadian store to venture outside of the major cities and their suburbs certainly comes with a provocative address.

Apple’s other new stores opening this Saturday include two in the U.S., and two abroad. Here’s the rest of list:

• Fashion Place, Murray, Utah
• Anchorage 5th Avenue Mall, Anchorage, Alaska
• Southland, Cheltenham, Victoria, Australia
• I Gigli, Florence, Italy

Apple’s planned retail expansion in 2011 includes a lot of international growth, and this crop of openings definitely reflects that. Any readers planning to pay a visit to any of these locations during their inaugural weekends?

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Last week, TheAppleBlog discussed Apple’s climb to number two in the global smartphone battle. In a report released yesterday by research firm IDC, we learned Apple is moving up the ladder in the broader cellphone category worldwide, too.

Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC, says “The entrance of Apple to the top 5 vendor ranking underscores the increased importance of smartphones to the overall market. Moreover, the mobile phone makers that are delivering popular smartphone models are among the fastest growing firms…Vendors that aren’t developing a strong portfolio of smartphones will be challenged to maintain and grow market share in the future.”

Don’t forget that Apple has only been manufacturing phones since 2007 and, in that time, has achieved market dominance with only one or two models on sale at once. With the iPhone’s release in 17 different countries in the past quarter alone, it’s set to push that progress even further. Nokia still has a huge lead, but it is eroding.

According to IDC, Nokia dropped over 4 percentage points to 32.4 percent market-share, and LG electronics missed its shipment goal by double digits. Samsung is the only company  ahead of Apple that experienced growth during the quarter.

Reception issues that spurred a product-wide free case program not only weren’t enough to slow down iPhone 4 sales, but seem to be a minor blip looked at from the vantage point of today. Apple continues to be the leader of the pack in design and product growth, despite occasional flaws and constant challenges from other strong contenders.

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According to a new financial analysis company, Trefis (via Forbes), the iPhone will pass BlackBerries in 2011. So as of next year, the iPhone will supposedly overtake RIM’s varied line of smartphones, despite offering far less in terms of consumer choice, and being limited to only one network in major markets like the U.S. So how’s that supposed to happen?

Before we get to how, let’s look at why Trefis thinks this information is important. If you’re looking to buy Apple stock, then it’s very important indeed. Trefis estimates that around 52 percent of Apple’s stock value is dependent upon its mobile phone business, so that as the iPhone’s global market share continues to grow, the stock price will climb accordingly. They have a neat little tool that illustrates this, and you can set your own prediction to see how it affects the model.

It’s neat, but it’s also a gross oversimplification. Even without considering the potentially market-rearranging effect the continuing emergence of Android might have on mobile phones globally, other factors like the iPad will probably have a disproportionately large effect on the stock price of Apple in the coming months. Marketing hype definitely inflates consumer expectation and hopefully appetite, but it also misrepresents how important a product is to a company’s future.

If Apple does overtake RIM, however, it will mark a significant milestone for the iPhone, and one consumers should be wary of more than anything. As a disruptor of the status quo, Apple innovates, and innovates well. Once it reaches the top of the pile and subjugates its competition, that doesn’t necessarily continue to hold true. A victory over RIM in the mobile phone market could lead to a stagnation of iPhone innovation, something the minor updates to the iPhone 3GS were hopefully not a sign of.

The iPhone can overtake the BlackBerry by continuing to expand the markets in which it is available, and by going with multiple carriers in places where it only has presence with one or two so far. It may have seemed unusual to hang on to single-provider models for this long, but now it’s in a much stronger position in terms of negotiating with others. It’s also begun to grow its share in the enterprise, where the BlackBerry has traditionally held sway.

2011 could indeed be the year of the iPhone, but I’m hoping RIM makes a comeback before then to stoke the fires under Apple and stave off any impending complacency that might crop up.

Once a year, Fortune releases its ranking of the top 500 global companies, and in recent years Apple has usually managed to nab a spot. This year, it rose to almost exactly the middle of the field at 253, up from 337 last year. The ratings are based on gross revenue, so it isn’t surprising to find larger PC manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard (32) and Dell (115) ranked significantly higher, despite the fact that Apple enjoys healthier profit margins.

Rankings are based on performance over the course of the last year, so the new list represents results for 2008. Apple first made the cut of the Global 500 list only two years ago for 2006, when they placed near the very bottom, at 492. Considering the short time frame, that’s actually a fairly impressive 2-year gain.

Take into account, though, that collective earnings for the list taken as a whole declined 85 percent this past year, which marks the most significant loss since Fortune began compiling it. Apple, Quanta, and HP were the only computer manufacturers on the list to post gains, with Apple outpacing all with a 38 percent boost in overall profits.

The results show that, if nothing else, Apple has been especially resistant to the effects of a down global economy thus far. Their success with the iPhone 3GS, coupled with the recent popularity of the newly upgraded 13-inch MacBook Pro, suggests that that resilience will continue through the summer and probably into the holiday season, especially if the rumored iMac price cuts come through as predicted.

The Fortune Global 500 is not to be confused with the Fortune 500, which only ranks American companies. When that list was released earlier this year in April, Apple had broken the top 100 for the first time since Steve Jobs’ return to the company in 1994. It reached number 71 on that list.

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