Fans turned out in force on Saturday for the opening of the first Apple Singapore store.

For months, the US tech giant has remained tight-lipped about the opening date for its first store in the city state – and in fact, for Southeast Asia – and the company was almost equally terse after the event.

Its official website featured a pile of photos from the opening, but this is all it managed to say about the event: “Apple Orchard Road opened Saturday to thousands of customers who queued to explore Apple’s first store in Southeast Asia. Braving the equatorial heat as early as Friday night, customers were greeted by Apple’s Angela Ahrendts and the store’s 237 employees when doors opened at 10am.”

Ahead of the official opening, an Apple representative told media that more than 200 people queued around the Knightsbridge Mall outlet and along Orchard Road.

Another Apple representative later said there were about 2000 people in the queue when the doors opened, with the store’s staff members lining up inside to welcome customers with high-fives and applause.

First in line was Peter Xiang, who started the queue at 8pm on Friday. The 25-year-old Chinese national, who works in Macau as a hotel concierge, told The Straits Times he had been to Apple store openings in Guangzhou and Nanjing as well as Macau.

For 20-year-old Tim Shao from China, live trees inside the store made it unique as most Apple stores were uniform in terms of the layout, he told Channel NewsAsia.

A 36.5m glass facade blurs the barrier between inside and out, while 16 interior trees echo the outside of the store, which features a canopy that juts out 7.6m to provide shelter from the rain as well as protect the store and customers from the sunlight.

Another design feature is two curved stone staircases, inspired by Apple’s new campus in Cupertino, which leads to the “town hall” gathering space on the upper floor for Today at Apple sessions.

Apart from having its core products on display on the ground level, the store will also also offer free hands-on educational sessions on topics such as coding and photography in the second-level Forum.

The Singaporean store takes the total number of Apple stores worldwide to 496, with 270 in the US and 40 in China. These are followed by the UK (38 stores), Canada (29) and Australia (22).