The US tech company Apple Inc's iPad products are emerging not just as a platform for entertainment, but as a productivity tool that can help small and medium-sized companies solve daily operations problems in China.

Interestingly, the company's iPads are now, in part, behind the resilient recovery of China's catering and retail industry amid the optimization of COVID-19 prevention measures.

As the long lines are queueing up outside popular restaurants and the streets are bustling again, small and medium-sized Chinese companies are showing a growing desire to embrace digital tools to boost productivity.

Tang Zhaorui, co-founder of Shanghai-based ice-cream brand Fluffy, said its businesses are improving significantly and, in today's business world, it's more important for smaller companies and traditional industries to learn to use advanced tools to flexibly solve problems at a low cost.

Fluffy has embraced the digital solutions developed by Flipos, a Shanghai-based company that is dedicated to developing an iPadOS app for serving food, beverages and retail industry customers. Based on software as a service, or the SaaS model, Flipos'app can help companies better process orders and manage daily operations at lower costs.

Kelvin Lu, a software developer and entrepreneur who started Flipos in 2017, said the company's app can be used in many scenarios including POS - point of sales - to process payment, online delivery, store order management, online reservation, kitchen display system and customer relationship management.

According to him, the company decided to create an app solely for iPadOS for multiple reasons, one being how its design allows more space for employees and customers to engage and interact in retail stores, and another being that iPads are easy to deploy and manage.

Also, the iPad software updates are durable, stable and simple. "As the software provider, Flipos cares about system stability. With less time dealing with compatibility and hardware failures raised by merchants compared with Android, Flipos can focus its energy on features and app development," Lu said.

Amid COVID, Wagas, a food chain brand in China, decided to replace all of its in-store POS systems and hardware in 2020 with iPads and the Flipos app for lower total costs and an improved customer experience.

Wagas has deployed more than 500 iPads in over 250 stores across 13 cities in China. According to the company, it reported 56 percent cost savings after switching to iPad and the Flipos app which have lower hardware and software expenses, compared with previous Windows-based hardware.

Meanwhile, iPads are versatile and easy to use, and the maintenance costs are lower as iPads are stable and durable, requiring fewer repairs, Wagas said.

The company also said, when compared with previous Windows-based hardware, the iPad coupled with Apple Business Manager and Mobile Device Management solutions reduced Wagas' device setup time for their new stores from 2.5 days to just 20 minutes. The time saved has enabled Wagas to achieve continued business growth with new store openings.