A Look at Apple's Spot-the-Shopper Technology
A Black Friday visit to the Apple Store in Palo Alto, Calif., offered a glimpse of the new technology Apple is using to speed purchases. — A store employee, Diego Aguirre, demonstrated an internal iPhone application that, for the last few weeks …
Context & Ripple Effects
Apple has been quietly rebuilding its stores around the iPhone for over a year: it first explored Ping-style social networking for its retail shops back in December 2010, and on November 8 it updated the Apple Store app with self-checkout support so customers could scan and pay without a register. The Palo Alto demonstration reported here adds the employee-facing half of that system — an internal iPhone app, shown by specialist Diego Aguirre, that lets staff find shoppers on the floor and close the sale where they stand.
The timing matters because the hardware wallet race is heating up: Apple and Microsoft are both reported to be adding NFC e-wallet payments to their phones in 2012, and a GfK study this week found Apple already well ahead of mobile rivals on brand loyalty. Instrumenting the store itself is how Apple converts that loyalty into faster transactions before the payments battle opens.
First-order effects
- Palo Alto store staff like Diego Aguirre can now locate individual shoppers via iPhone and process purchases on the spot, cutting queue time during peak events like Black Friday.
- The employee tool completes the loop opened when the Apple Store app gained customer-side self-checkout earlier in November 2011 — buyers and sellers now both carry the same device.
Second-order effects
- With Apple and Microsoft both planning NFC e-wallets for 2012, whoever controls the in-store transaction flow — the register, the phone, or the associate's handset — gains leverage over payment partners and card networks.
- Rival retailers watching Apple's floor get instrumented face pressure to equip their own staff with mobile point-of-sale tools or concede the checkout-speed advantage during holiday traffic.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the store shifts from a place with registers to a software-defined space where every associate is a point of sale — a structure that would also make location-aware notifications and services a natural next layer for retailers.
- Retail differentiation moves further from product assortment toward transaction experience, favoring chains that control both the device ecosystem and the storefront.
The trend: Physical retail is being re-engineered around the smartphone, with Apple turning its own stores into the proving ground for mobile-assisted selling ahead of the 2012 NFC wallet push.