All Apple Stores In China Now Open, But There’s A Catch

Apple is one of the many US tech companies that has directly experienced the effect of COVID-19. At the onset of the outbreak, the Cupertino tech giant was forced to close its stores to protect its employees and to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. Now, Apple says it is reopening all its stores in China, but there’s a catch.

It was in the early part of Feb. 2020 that Apple announced that it is temporarily closing its stores in China. Earlier, a company spokesman said that the Cupertino company is reopening all of its 42 stores in the region, reports Reuters. However, as part of the preemptive measure of the company, the store hours would be limited.

The official Chinese website of the company posted the opening time for all stores, which is from 10:00 AM to 11 AM local time. Earlier, Apple already released an advisory that not all stores would be opened. But, based on a post by Twitter user setteBIT, it looks like all Apple stores are now fully operational, but 41 of these stores are running with reduced hours.

On Mar. 19, only 39 out of these 41 stores would have reduced operating hours. At this point, it is not yet clear when all the Apple Stores in China would be back to normal operating hours. The opening of all Apple stores in China is a good indication that the country is slowly getting back on track after it lost thousands of lives to the COVID-19.

Apple’s production was greatly affected because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Foxconn, Apple’s major supplier of iPhone parts, was also forced to shut down for a few days on Feb. because of the COVID-19. The facility also suffered from low employee turn out because of fear of contracting the virus.

Recently, Foxconn announced that it intends to return to its normal operation by the end of Mar. 2020. The company is hopeful that it could meet the orders of its business partners all over the world. Apple is expected to launch the iPhone SE 2 this month, but it has not yet confirmed if the launch will really happen or when it is releasing the product.