Apple rolls out new guidelines as it opens retail stores

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Christoforous, Brian Sozzi, and Dan Howley discuss the new customer experience at Apple stores as they begin to reopen.

Video Transcript

DAN HOWLEY: So, yeah, Deirdre O'Brien, the head of Apple's retail division, basically laid out how the stores are going to be reopening and where they're going to be reopening in a letter she released over the weekend, basically saying that they're going to be opening stores slowly, and it'll depend on how the regions are opening.

And how they'll be doing that is they'll have some curbside pickup in areas. They'll have some in-store availability where people can actually go up to the Genius Bar. They're saying that they're going to focus more on one-on-one individuals. They're also going to limit capacity at stores and have temperature checks as well as kind of signage that says different things about whether or not you've been feeling symptoms of COVID and to avoid the store.

They're also going to require everybody in the stores to wear masks. That includes employees as well as customers. And if the customers don't have masks on them, they will provide them to them. So that's something that Apple is kind of going out of their way potentially to try to avoid conflicts with customers. We've seen some of those where folks just don't have masks or refuse to put them on. Apple may be trying to head that off at the pass.

But basically saying, look, we're going to be opening slowly. We're going to be taking a deliberate approach to this. There are signs that they will continue to open stores in the US. There are some open in certain areas right now, but they're not really going to be fully opening them up. They only have about a hundred stores globally that are open to customers. That's out of 500-plus stores.

ALEXIS CHRISTOFOROUS: Hey, Dan, what-- I mean, Apple stores have been open for a little while now in parts of Asia. Do they report how things are going there? Are people willing to go back into these stores-- physically go back into these stores?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, they reopened all of their greater-China stores the same day that they closed all the stores globally outside of greater China. So they've been doing well there. They haven't experienced any issues, and they said, you know, these are kind of the lessons that they've learned from the social-distancing aspect that they have to focus on in greater China. They're bringing that over to other countries where they have their stores, and they're just going to continue that process.

So I think they've really taken to heart what they've seen there. Obviously Deirdre O'Brien is pointing out as well that they helped donate masks as well as develop face guards for first responders. So this is kind of their effort to ensure that they can open their stores, get more people indoors, but do it responsibly.

BRIAN SOZZI: Dan, does Apple need these big flagship stores? I can just see the photos out there getting ready to crop up on Twitter. These stores are jam packed again, and everything that we've learned on social distancing just completely goes away.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, I mean, I think people will be, you know, relatively spread out at the stores just because they'll be able to guard against having them come in now. You know, they may have to take care of the lines outside. That's something that we've seen. New Jersey opened their beaches, and they were selling beach passes and supposed to be social distancing, but there were people, you know, packed on top of each other. We've seen that across the board where people are lined up outside stores.

So hopefully they recognize that and they're able to spread people out a little more at their locations. But the stores are still a very important part of their revenue. That's where they get a lot of the sales for their AppleCare portion of their services revenue.

BRIAN SOZZI: All right, Dan Howley, thanks so much.