Poor Intel TV dies on vine, its fancy pop-up shops turned into cafes, cinemas Intel will open three pop-up retail locations in US cities this holiday season, but they won't be the kind of stores that some Intel execs originally envisioned. That's because Chipzilla originally picked up the retail spaces in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles to host the rah-rah launch of its much-hyped but little-seen …
...somehow want to turn into lifestyle companies.
I mean if I buy Intel, I do it for the hardware, not some software or brand or whatever. I want hardware that suits my needs. This kind of marketing has put me off since they started using dancing clean room employees in their ads.
Other companies try to get into the same trap, like ISPs for example which want to sell added services instead of just shifting around bits like I pay them to do.
So please Intel, stop making shitty marketing decisions and just churn out decent hardware for decent prices. AMD is not going to give you another K6.
I was in PC World recently (UK box shifter of computer & TVs etc) and noticed that there was about 3 times as many customers looking at the range of Apple & Android devices as were looking at Windows laptops, even though the latter has over twice the space allocated to it.
Of course, that may not match actual sales.
Products aside, what you saw are the two primary ways of retailing a product. One way is to throw scads of products at the consumer until one lands in their shopping cart. The other is to minimize the number of products and showcase them. It's why expensive stuff is put in glass cases. It isn't to prevent theft, it's to give the customer the impression that those products are special and deserving of their high prices.
In a high traffic store the showcase approach also consolidates the crowd. You get the effect you noted, you saw everyone looking at something and you noted what the something was. It worked as designed.
No way is any better than the other, they both work. The showcase approach does directly target the Apple demographic though. The average Apple user wants to know they are buying 'the best' and presenting something as extra special accomplishes that nicely. An iPhone could direct debit your Visa every 4hrs and people would still buy them. It's extremely well done retailing.
*Disclosure: I have an iPhone. I like it just fine. My comments weren't meant to disparage any buying group, just that if well done, product placement can make your target market do whatever you want. Nobody is immune to the effects of marketing, it's just that Apples marketing is extremely obvious.
The stores will be a community hub in the mornings, transform into a technology showcase in the afternoons and then become an entertainment hot spot in the evenings ... In the mornings, Intel will offer free coffee. On Friday evenings it will screen free movies. And it plans to invite speakers from the stores' local communities to give talks on a variety of topics
Exactly what we need to while away the next five years of the depression. As long as there is an acceptable burger outlet nearby..
Maybe the content owners do not believe in Intel and how they will make sure the content is protected. HDCP has been cracked since 2010 and HDCP is 100% Intel. How is Intel making sure the crack doesn't propagate? They will sue anyone that sells an unauthorized device. I'm sure some companies in China are not concerned about any lawsuits relating to it if they decide to enter in a market that allows copying of protected material.
You know, there's a really good reason that most manufacturers (of anything at scale) don't do retail. It's a completely different world. It isn't efficient or logical or even reasonable. It's 180-degrees out from the manufacturing world. It could be the best ever (x) and it wouldn't matter one jot. The needs of each business are too far apart to come together in a meaningful way. It's the same reason you don't buy sausage at the pig farm.
The channel and all its weirdness is necessary to bridge that gap. That's why it was invented, direct to retail is insanity. There are exceptions of course. Apple pulled it off but they had been getting by on a sale-by-sale basis for decades, they already knew their customers when they finally hit on something super popular. Dell failed going direct to retail. Apple is a fringe case, Dell is the norm.
There's nothing sexy about processors and IC's. I've been inside Intel fabs and I can assure you, nothing Intel does has the sexy retail requires. Just the thought of an Intel retail store makes my eyelids get heavy. Manufacturers aren't giving the channel their % just for fun... They should recognize that and stay focused on what they do. Not on an entirely different industry.
I buy sausage at the pig farm! Moreover, it's lovely sausage - nice little farm a few miles from work where they butcher their own animals [slaughtered off-site]. Admittedly, the farmer employs a butcher to come in each week and do the butchering for him, but it's a nice little model for selling very high-quality meat cheaper than the supermarkets.
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