In a report by Bloomberg, Apple is said to be preparing an update to its iOS Apple Store app, where customers can buy Apple’s hardware and accessories online. The new update will feature recommendations for suggested purchases, in a new ‘For You’ tab (mirroring Apple Music).
According to the Bloomberg report, the new recommendations will be part of a wider update to the Apple Store app. Right now, the design of the Apple Store app for iPhone and iPad is quite distinct with the iPad app favouring interactive photo galleries for presentation. It sounds like the two interfaces will become more unified with this forthcoming update.
From Bloomberg:
‘For You’ product recommendations will rollout ahead of Apple’s new hardware announcements in the fall and may help the company drive some additional revenue through its system. Suggesting more iPhone accessories to known iPhone owners has to have some positive impact on sales conversions.
As Apple is currently in the middle of a sales slump, as seen on its earnings call, the new sales opportunities presented by the recommendation feature comes at a critical time for the company’s financial status.
Right now the iPad and iPhone Apple Retail apps are separate (albeit a universal binary), but this new version will be one responsive design
— Mark Gurman (@markgurman) July 28, 2016
It will be interesting to see how Apple reconciles its stance on consumer privacy with the addition of a recommendations algorithm, which will inevitably need to review some subset of a customer’s sales history to be able to make intelligent choices. Perhaps, Apple will employ differential privacy to protect anonymity as much as possible.
The report only mentions changes to the Apple Store app, it is not clear if the same For You product recommendations will also make their way to the Apple Online Store website. Apple last overhauled its online presence about a year ago by combining the store with the product pages.
