Microsoft still taking Apple on head-to-head in continued retail expansion - Page 4

Somehow this image seems appropriate for this thread:

 

 

Agreed! MS should open a chain of "family burger restaurants" all along the Interstate Highways, call 'em "Ballmer's Big Boy"… It would feature a caricature of Ballmer as a statue in front of every restaurant…  They'd serve a massive stacked burger (called The Big B's Big Boy), offer an old style "drive in" option complete with roller skating Car Hops who can ALSO do a quick "Office Genius" consultation while you gulp down a shake and fries with that...

 

Burgers and a Shake with Fries and a Technical Consultation? It goes together like flowers and sunshine, like honey and bees, like… Nerds and Glasses!

 

 

Surely it couldn't be any worse than the real ideas in play…. could it?

Dell tried retail back in 2006.  They never made in money and shut down their retail presence in 2008.

 

Dell tried retail back in 2006. They didn't make any money at it and had to shut down their retail in 2008.

 

And you can't change the past either, "my friend".  Microsoft wouldn't have been where they were if they hadn't stolen from Apple to begin with.

 

Ashley Tisdale & Justin Bieber performed at their first two store openings.

Whatever they did worked.
 

Whopper > Big Mac #JustSayn

 

 

Running late for a Genius appt., I was rushing through the Fashion Valley mall in San Diego. A tad preoccupied with making the appt., I had the Apple Store app running, knowing that I could connect to their customer support… was halfway into the store when I realized that the Genius Bar hadn't moved, i just made my turn a few hundred feet shorter than i should have. Talk about a moron in a hurry & what his perception of that is…. It's just hard to take their retail expansion seriously, when they could be focusing their efforts on enhancing existing retail efforts @ big box electronics stores. They could improve the level of windows knowledge by having a company rep chatting with store staff & customers alike. microsoft's now slavish copying of Apple is becoming worrisome, like they've become stalkers….

Steve Jobs personally asked Bill Gates for the financial assistance. At the time, Apple was a few months from bankruptcy, Steve Jobs had just returned to Apple as unofficial CEO. The investment was packaged as a licensing agreement for microsoft, which provided microsoft with various Apple technologies & an end to the lawsuits. For Apple, it was a face-saving effort to shore up their finances until they could rollout a refreshed product line, new cost controls & self-supporting revenue base. The agreement also gave Apple time, knowing that microsoft would now support Office for the Mac & various other software titles for a certain period, meant that they could still retain some loyal users. This also gave Apple time to develop software titles to fill-in if microsoft cut any after the agreements expired. Thus OS X had a great web browser, Safari, when IE for Mac was pulled & when wmplayer was cut, OS X had options to support users to view virtually any files. Office for Mac generates a revenue stream substantial for microsoft that they wont ignore it

Cheers !

I don't know what I just read or why I just read it in this thread, but it feels like a bot. Weird. Ah, well.

 I don't know if that is the case outside of the USA where the zune (hardware) was never released.

 

Personally I find the Zune software as annoying as itunes and would be glad to see it dumped.

Ah, messiah Microsoft!!!  And without Edison, we'd be without light bulbs.  That's BS, fan boy.
 

 

Didn't Gateway try their hand at brick and mortar too…?

 

Just doesn't seem like the best business model for these "branded OEM" box makers, does it… 

 

 

Someone mentioned how Burger King built their business by opening outlets near to McDonalds locations…  Starbucks did the same vis a vis local / other chain espresso bars… 

 

In both of those cases it was a case of one collection of 'branded' products vs another…. each was selling their own differentiated products mostly, competing directly with another firm's own products… stuff with specific 'brands' attached...

 

In the case of MS Store vs Apple Store, I see "90%" Apple branded products in one store, and aside from Office, WIndows and X-Box, not much MS branded product in the MS Store. 

 

It does make a difference when comparing apples to apples (no pun intended)...

The headline is still bothering me.

 

When I read "...taking someone on head to head...", to me it implies "running neck and neck" every step of the way… operating on competitive, almost equal terms...

 

except in this case….

 

Apple has almost 400 stores vs MS' 20…. 

 

Apple enjoys hundreds of millions of $ in sales every quarter vs MS' $13 million over two years...

 

 

This is not remotely "going head to head".

 

I think the headline is just horribly wrong here...

 

Just sayin'...