Apple is said to be working on a revamped version of its Apple Store app, which will offer personalized product recommendations for users, based on their purchase history.
The updated retail app could be rolled out in the next two weeks, according to people familiar with the intended revamp. It’s likely to include a “For You” tab that suggests products based on prior orders, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the project isn’t yet public.
The new tab would work much the same way as the “For You” tabs in the Apple Music and Apple News tabs. An Apple spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg for confirmation.
Currently, the Apple Store app offers users access to their buying history, but doesn’t use that data to offer suggestions on possile purchases. The revamped app would offer such recommendations. For example, if a buyer has purchased an iPad Pro in the past, the app might suggest an Apple Pencil, or Smart Keyboard case.
The shift toward using recommendations would mark a change for Apple, where privacy concerns have traditionally usurped efforts to use customer-behavior data to garner more revenue. While its music-streaming and news apps also recommend tracks and stories, they primarily do so based on interests that customers have chosen to declare. Amazon and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, meanwhile, regularly mine a user’s prior tastes and purchases to generate business by recommending complementary products.
The report says Apple plans to debut the new app sometime in the near future, possibly within the next two weeks. Apple continues to overhaul its retail operations, a task begun when Angela Ahrendts joined the company as head of the retail division, in 2014.
