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Yes, I think this will make it easier for them for sure and should theoretically help your links pick up. If you want to be 100% safe you don't violate any guidelines, just make sure you're not explicitly telling them they have to link back in exchange for product, but you can encourage and if they do on their own free will it should be fine.

Apple is doing what is doing because it decided to go the subfolders way for their main website, but they obviously own also the ccTlds for brand protection and redirect them. Once, though, it was using subdomains for its ecommerce part (now they are subfolders under each country section. Actually, it is not correct to say that one solution (subfolders, ccTld or subdomains) is better than another. It all depends on the specific business needs and, secondly, on technological needs. However, it is true that when a company is starting an internationalization of its business, a better option is going with subfolders, so to give them some strength via internal linking, while not forgetting to improve the popularity and authority of the country targeting subfolders with localized link building and digital PR campaigns. On a middle/long term, though, and traffic and conversion metrics justify it, it may be better to move the subfolder to a unique domain name geotargeted to the marketed country. The reason of this choice can also be found out of the SEO world (i.e.: in the UK the marketing strategy is different than in the USA because of nuances of the same UK market or different seasonality). Regarding hosting... having a site hosted in the country the site itself is targeting is not anymore a ranking factor in International SEO since when cloud hosting became mainstream. However, it still remains a (tiny) geotargeting signal for Google, as they repeated sometimes on Twitter and Google Hangouts.

I like the direction that you are going in. Assuming they have filed all of their legal aspects of their business (trademark like you said, copyright, etc.), I would consider also registering the negative versions of their domain name. That way if there are any competitors out there or trolls trying to create a website in which they bash you, they will have a much harder time with it. Example: website123.com is your domain/brand. Negative Versions: website123scam.com, website123sucks.com, website123ripoff.com Things of that nature. Just something to consider. The last thing you need is someone ranking right next to you with one of these negative domain names involving your brand.

I'd go to the SEMrush dashboard and copy/paste the URL in the search box.  Then press the orange search button. You will get a report that shows the keywords that the page ranks for and the rankings that they currently hold. The keywords that they are targeting can, and usually are, very different from the keywords that they are ranking for  -- and the keywords that they are targeting is less valuable information than the keywords that they are ranking for. And, on that I hold that the intentions of other people who own a website can not be divined, nor is their smarts anything that I would be willing to bet my money on.