The new premium reseller store of Apple that opened at City Centre 2 on Sunday. (Pradip Sanyal)

The city of Eden Gardens wants a bigger bite of the Apple.

Team Steve Jobs has not only tempted Calcutta to bite into its second Imagine (“Apple’s premium reseller store”) at City Centre 2, Rajarhat, but is set to lure the city to a third within the next six months.

That would put Calcutta within touching distance of the other metros on at least one count — the Apple playlist. Delhi gets its fifth premium store later this month, Mumbai and Bangalore have four each.

“According to our research, there definitely is space for three Apple stores in Calcutta,” said Sanjay Chordia, the owner of Imagine, that opened its second outlet on Sunday to long queues and a mad rush to grab the first-day-first-buy offers.

“People had been complaining that the presence of Apple here is not enough and so they end up buying from Singapore or Mumbai. We are on the lookout for a third store in south Calcutta,” added Chordia.

The demand for the iconic iPhone has often overtaken supply, with the market growing “four to six times” in the three years since the first store, on the second floor of Salt Lake’s City Centre, opened.

Now, the Apple spotlight shifts to New Town. “Things are evolving here. Our primary targets are Lake Town, Baguiati, Barasat, Madhyamgram and that entire catchment zone. Around 20 per cent of the buyers at the City Centre (Salt Lake) store were from these areas. The buyers from Rajarhat will be a bonus,” explained Chordia.

The 3,50,000 sq ft mall with an investment of Rs 275 crore (including Rs 100 crore for Swissotel, a five-star hotel atop the mall), will stock 180 to 200 brands.

On the ground floor, very close to the main entrance, is the 1,500 sq ft Imagine store stocking the Apple array — the iPhone with accessories, MacBook Pro, iPod Nano with camera — and hoping to lure both serious buyers and the passing-through crowd.

On September 9, Apple unveiled the iPhone OS 3.1, iPod Nano with camera and iPod shuffle new edition in San Francisco.

“A growing number of Calcuttans are aware and are looking for solutions,” said Chordia, adding that “many institutions” are starting to go big on Apple. Case in point: St Xavier’s College’s computer centre with Apple desktops.

But the brand is still hush-hush about the India plans of the iPhone 3GS, that launched in San Francisco this June.