What does Appel Inc, know about the COVID-19 virus spike that the CDC and our federal government do not know? Is there a pattern in these areas that Apple Inc have identified ?
Here is a little more from the article about what Apple uses to monitor risk factors in its stores.
Apple Inc. said it would re-close nearly a dozen stores across four states where cases of the coronavirus have climbed, showing wariness in the business community about the safety of reopening in some places.
Retailers from
Best Buy Co. to
Macy’s Inc. have set plans to reopen hundreds of U.S. locations by the end of June. Those that were forced to close in March have taken various approaches to reopening, with some wanting to move faster or more deliberately than local policy makers would allow.
Apple has taken a more conservative to store operations than other retailers. In mid-March, it was among the first to close its roughly 270 stores in the U.S., and upon reopening some stores in May, it required that staff and customers and staff wear masks and undergo temperature checks.
The closure of 11 of its stores—two near Charlotte, N.C., one near Greenville, S.C., two near Naples, Fla., and six across Arizona—showed that it is evaluating local information about positive Covid-19 test results and taking measures to protect staff and customers from infection, as well as its brand from negative publicity of an outbreak at stores, analysts said.
“We take this step with an abundance of caution as we closely monitor the situation, and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible,” an Apple spokesman said in a statement. The company declined to comment further on the decision.
Apple’s announcement
weighed on the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the company’s share price slipped 0.6% Friday.
Other retailers are likely to follow Apple in toggling operations on and off based on local data, said Jean-Emmanuel Biondi, principal in Deloitte Consulting’s retail practice.
Many of the companies Deloitte advises, which includes the country’s top retailers, have set up command centers with executives from operations, distribution, human resources and merchandising. They are evaluating case levels where they have stores and reviewing GPS data that shows how far people travel from their homes, a barometer of people’s comfort with returning to everyday life.
Mr. Biondi said reopenings will be faster in the future because companies now have set policies for store operations during the pandemic, including maps for how traffic should flow from doorways to checkout counters.
Apple was one of the first major U.S. retailers in mid-March to close its stores nationwide amid the pandemic.
In reopened stores, Apple has required customers and employees to wear masks. The company also instituted other safety measures, including temperature checks at the door and social distancing inside.
Closing a handful of Apple stores will have limited impact on Apple sales. About 8% of Apple’s $260 billion in annual sales occur at physical retail stores, according to Loup Ventures, a research-driven venture-capital firm.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives called the closures “worrisome,” though, saying they spoke to “the volatility and fluidity of this Covid environment” and showed that retailers will continue to be cautious as “spikes are seen in geographic pockets.”
Next week Apple is planning to host its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where it unveils new software and technologies. The conference is being held virtually for the first time in its more than three-decade history.