Apple has announced that it is temporarily closing the doors of all of its Apple Store locations in California and the greater London area. Apple Stores will also be closing in other markets where there has been a surge in COVID-19 cases. The announcement of store closings was made over the weekend on the Apple website.
All 53 locations in California will be closed, with the announcement made a day after the announcement that all locations in the Los Angeles area would be closed. California closures include all major locations, including the San Francisco Bay area. As of now, Apple has yet to say when the stores might reopen.
This is a bad time for Apple to be closing its retail locations. This is the last week for people to buy Christmas gifts and Apple tablets and smartphones are common gifts for the holiday season. The closures will certainly hurt Apple’s bottom line and could keep it from hitting the $100 billion in quarterly revenue it was on track to reach for the first time.
Closures in California come as the state has become a hotspot for the pandemic within the United States. The state has surpassed 1.8 million cases of coronavirus as of Saturday. On Saturday alone, 43,608 people were added to the list of the infected, and 272 people died. The state has a total of 22,432 reported fatalities related to coronavirus.
In the UK, a full lockdown of London and southeast England was made by Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stop a new coronavirus strain from spreading rapidly. Infection rates nearly doubled in London over the last week, with 60 percent of infections attributed to the new strain. Apple said the conditions in the communities in England it serves were such that it was temporarily closing stores in the area. It did promise to have its teams and customers back in stores as soon as possible.
