Apple closes 2 more China shops on coronavirus concerns

0
451
gettyimages-1193593212

Revealed: The Secrets our Clients Used to Earn $3 Billion

Apple has actually closed 3 of its China shops due to issue about the coronavirus.


Getty Images

Apple has actually briefly shuttered 2 more shops in China, bringing the overall closed as of Wednesday to 3, as fret about the coronavirus rock the world.

Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday stated Apple had actually closed its Qingdao shop previously today as a safety measure. Two more shops, in Fuzhou and Nanjing, are now likewise closed due to the fact that the shopping centers they lie in have actually been briefly shuttered. 

The coronavirus was very first discovered in the Chinese city of Wuhan late in 2015. It has actually declared more than 130 lives and contaminated approximately 6,000 Chinese residents with a pneumonia-like health problem, according to China’s National Health Commission. The infection, called 2019-nCoV, was reported to the World Health Organization on Dec. 31 and has actually been under examination considering that. Chinese researchers have actually connected the illness to a household of infections called coronaviruses, that include the lethal SARS and Middle East breathing syndrome. 

newspath coronavirus


Now playing:
Watch this:

Deadly coronavirus detected in the US



1:41

The virus has since spread to Europe, Australia and the US. Scientists have yet to fully understand the destructive potential of the new virus. Researchers and investigators are just beginning to figure out how it’s transmitted and how far it has spread.

Apple on Tuesday said it wasn’t immune to the virus sweeping the globe. 

Apple’s China footprint

China has become one of Apple’s most important markets over the past several years. In early 2015, China surpassed the US to become Apple’s biggest iPhone market. (The US later regained that status.) Apple’s revenue from Greater China rose 3.1% to $13.6 billion in the quarter. It lagged behind the Americas and Europe, but sales in some product areas soared during the period.

While Apple sells a lot of its gadgets in China, it’s also tied to the country in another key way. Apple designs its phones in the US, but the devices — like many other electronics — are assembled in China.

Along with Apple’s closed stores, “a number” of its retail partners have also closed their locations, Cook said Tuesday during Apple’s quarterly earnings call. “Many of the stores that remain open have also reduced operating hours,” Cook said, and the company is taking extra precautions for its staff and customers. It’s deep cleaning its stores frequently and conducting temperature checks of retail workers to make sure they remain healthy. 

“While our sales within the Wuhan area itself are small, retail traffic has also been impacted outside of this area across the country in the last few days,” Cook said.  

Apple also has suppliers in the Wuhan area, but it has alternative sources for those components and is “working on mitigation plans to make up any expected production loss,” Cook said. What’s less clear is how the coronavirus will impact suppliers in other parts of China, he said. The Chinese government extended the Lunar New Year holiday break from the end of January to Feb. 10, which will delay the startup of Apple supplier factories, Cook said. 

“The situation is emerging, and we’re still gathering lots of data points and monitoring it very closely,” Cook said Tuesday. He noted that as of last week, Apple had limited employee travel to affected areas to “business critical situations.”

Bloomberg earlier reported news of the store closures.