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back to article Microsoft plans to open 75 retail stores in US

Microsoft is re-hatching its plan to accelerate retail store expansion in the US before turning its sights on the rest of the world. Microsoft's planned new stores Store locator: Microsoft's retail expansion in the next three years The first iteration came in 1999, when Microsoft set up a shop in San Francisco – but …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Mushroom

    Will they speak English at those stores?

    If the MS staff quotes in this article are anything to go by, the answer is no.

    The seriously want to "think like their customers?" I have some information for them: the majority of us do not speak Microsoft corporate-jargon bollocks.

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  2. Peter 39
    FAIL

    Problem is ...

    Problem is that Microsoft does not understand what business it is in.

    You open a whole pile of stores, as Apple has done, because ...

    1. you have compelling products that people want to buy, and

    2. you're not getting acces to those people.

    Microsoft sells primarily to companies, not individual consumers. They're selling we-can-do-it-all infrastructure stuff and Volume Licensing.

    Stores in malls are about selling product directly to individuals. To make that work you must have compelling products that those individuals want to touch, try and buy. Sad to say, Microsoft's track record here varies between abysmal and OK. The only "OK" I can recall is Xbox (no flames please - I'm not a gamer) but it seems to have done decently despite the RRoD problems. Kinect is interesting also but I see that as an accessory rather than a product, so I'm not counting it here. For abysmal, the list includes Kin; for bad it's probably Zune.

    For Microsoft to open more stores will ...

    1. cost a bunch of money

    2. expose just how weak their product portfolio really is

    Microsoft is trying to generate "Apple buzz" by mimicking Apple's stores. It doesn't work that way. There has to be something that people want to buzz about, and Microsoft just doesn't have it. I'm not sure it ever will but it certainly doesn't look like "soon".

    Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But Rule #1 of imitation is that you have to do it better than the original (or at least as well in some circumstances). That won't happen here.

    I think that Microsoft's Board or Directors has taken leave of its senses. There's no strategy to follow the success of the Win/Office franchise and they have Steve Ballmer in place to execute. Bad plan, folks. Bad plan.

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  3. JDX Gold badge

    @buzzword, metavisor

    Linux weirdos have hated Windows for ages. Linux is still an OS for weirdos, as far as the PC goes. Apple is still a minority OS, propped up by their hardware. Inevitably iPhone will become replaced by something else cool and Apple will implode to a remnant... all this web stuff might or might not kill MS but Apple are screwed the moment iPhone isn't #1 phone.

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  4. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    For people who camp out in front of the store....

    I never purchase software which is less than (1) year old or is at revision 0. Why do people insist on doing unpaid beta testing for Microsoft. Some even PAY Microsoft to speak with them to tell them about their bugs.

    When considering a software upgrade, I consider what the cost is, what it will do for me, and how many hours I will need to fight with it to make it work i.e. Apple's latest update 10.6.8 wrecks a lot of applications and only provides a mechanism to install 10.7.0. I declined. See how easy that was?

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  5. Peter Holroyd
    FAIL

    Addressing the consumerisation!!!

    Turner said Redmond's 11 outlets in the US were giving it a better handle on "addressing the consumerisation of IT"

    How can even Microsoft have missed the consumerisation that has been happening over the past few years. They still want 3 years to catch on to what is happening. Well Mr Ballmer and Mr Turner, here's letting you into a secret - you never will catch on will you.

    I completely agree with Peter 39's comments - words out of my mouth

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Yes, but...

      Microsoft won the "consumerisation of IT" battle long, long ago. Although there are still IT directors who find it hard to admit, it was not their decision that put Windows PCs on desktops: it was the demand of the people sitting at those desktops. If anyone doesn't believe me, just try putting a dumb terminal on one of your worker's desks, and see how they react.

      Back in the day, we knew that applications running on servers were easy to configure, easy to maintain, easy to make available to those who ran them. When we had a problem, we had to sort it out on just one machine, not a dozen. We soon found out that the same symptom, on Windows, could have a dozen different causes (or, often we never even found out the cause, just gritted our teeth and did another re-install or image restore), but the users were watching the ads and reading the glossies. WYSIWYG and wallpaper was the order of the day, and they would never (even though they could have Lotus 1-2-3 and Wordperfect) never ever go back to their terminals.

      Yes, the next, and subsequent chapters might have been negotiating those licences with the IT director. Maybe even MS themselves have lost touch and forgotten that, in the beginning, it was the ordinary end user that laid down the foundation for their monopoly. If they don't know how "those people think" now, then they must have forgotten, which would be a very stupid thing to do.

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  6. Peter Holroyd

    Win/Office - Wince for short

    Have Microsoft got a strategy to replace Win/Office. If they have then perhaps they have named it the Wince strategy. Anyone else got an apt name for Microsoft's strategy going forwards?

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  7. Mark Simon

    The difference ...

    One thing which has always distinguished Apple from Microsoft is its appeal. Apple promotes itself as fun and easy and arty. Nobody would accuse Microsoft of that. I can’t see Microsoft retail stores having the same atmosphere or the same clientele.

    But who knows ... ?

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  8. Richard Porter
    FAIL

    Great OS?

    No, it's not a great OS - it's just that you need it to run some apps that have only been written for Windows because a lot of innocents bought it in the early days. It's no more a great OS than VHS was a great video technology.

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  9. Richard Porter

    re. Problem is

    Apart from X-box Microsoft doesn't actually have any shiny hardware to sell. The shops could only push other people's hardware that's loaded with Windows, plus application software and that puts it into direct competition with its dealers. Apple, on the other hand, has lots of sexy products that people want, that have a high profit margin and that the high street box shifters have largely ignored.

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  10. NemoWho
    Facepalm

    Izzat So?

    I worked in a ComputerLand here in the states in 1985.

    Guess what? Not an Apple ][ in sight. Ten-packs of floppies for more money than I'm happy to recall... go Verbatim!!

    Selling stuff in shops indeed....

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  11. bumpy

    What's in the shop?

    There's a Microsoft retail store in a mall near me (and not too many miles from 1 Microsoft Way itself). Just a few doors down from the Apple store. Pure coincidence, I'm sure! The MS store has quite a variety of things for sale - MS software, Windows phones, XBox hardware and games, desktops and laptops (mainly Dell), and MS schwag (stress ball anyone?). When I last popped in it was just as busy as the Apple store. They look similar, but not the same. Lots of black&white and metal in the Apple store, lots of glass and primary colors in the MS store. I'm guessing some of the stores will do well, but they certainly have a long row to hoe.

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  12. me n u
    Pint

    hmmm, let's see

    ""It's helping us to transition from thinking about our customers to thinking like our customers"

    -I doubt that. That would mean you hate yourself. If so, seek counseling.

    "And giving us that direct customer feedback is what we're learning and getting from our stores,"

    -Proof they don't read their own blogs (too much contempt)

    "We're going to open up 75 more stores over the next two to three years"

    -So, which is it, 2 or 3? Damn decisions! Wow! 75 stores, no doubt sprinkled around the M$ campus.

    "continue to bring our stores outside the US as well"

    -Spread the ill-will overseas as well

    "he was "shocked" to discover an Apple dealer flogging Windows 7 on Mac hardware."

    -So the Apple dealer was tasering and flogging Windows 7 on top of Mac hardware...kinky!

    "Now, that should tell all of you a lot about the importance of having a great OS. Even the Apple franchise stores think so,"

    -Linux distributors everywhere thank you for the compliments. And yes, even Apple franchise stores think Linux is great.

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  13. Christian Berger

    One advantage will be....

    That whenever some M$-Fanboy asks you yet again for Windows support, you can now direct them to the nearest Microsoft store.

    Well about the books they sell. They are actually not to bad, but they clearly show how little effort Microsoft is putting into their software products. For example Menu entries in Windows need to be translated by the application. So if you want to have a multilingual application, you need to have a list of words and phrases translated into major languages. On most modern platforms you have some sort of locale system to get those phrases from a platform maintained database. Microsoft actually has such a database and they print it in one of their $400 books. It would have been trivial for them to ship it with their OS, but they refuse to do so.

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