DataHerald estimates that between 15,000 and 22,000 individuals “attended” the retail location each week based on samples of foot movement in Apple stores. Any time a customer spends four minutes or more inside the store counts as a visit. Apple stores experienced a spike in traffic in January 2020, with recorded foot traffic breaching the 20,000 visitor threshold and nearly reaching 22,000 visits in a single week. The situation, nevertheless, swiftly evolved.

Lockdown procedures, travel bans, and stay-at-home directives were put in place across the country as the coronavirus epidemic spread. The data shows that this precise moment occurred in April 2020, when weekly Apple Store visits fell below 1,000. This is around 13,000 fewer customers than the shops were seeing on average only a few months ago. Foot traffic grew as things improved, but for the remainder of 2021, it only averaged 5,000 visits per day. Only about one-third as many people were visiting the stores as they had before the virus struck.

Through 2021, customers started to return, and foot traffic numbers steadily rose. Despite the growth in traffic, the number of visitors just once each week exceeded 10,000, and that was in December. The seasonal uptick may have resulted from Christmas consumers choosing Apple products in-person. Or, considering that many Apple stores are found in malls, it might simply be that idly curious Christmas shoppers stopped by for a look. Foot traffic dropped once more in January, and the most recent count in July 2022 revealed numbers below 6,000 once more.