The empires of the future are the empires of the mind - Winston Churchill
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Microsoft announces its first two store locations
MICROSOFT HAS ANNOUNCED that it will open its first two retail stores in the (not very) white-hot suburban hubs of Scottsdale, Arizona and Mission Viejo, California.
The Vole confirmed on Tuesday that it's signed leases on storefronts in those two upscale bedroom communities, according to Cnet.
Apparently Microsoft targeted the Mission Viejo location because there's already an Apple store in the same mall. Jobs' Mob must be fairly quaking in their loafers.
However, as for those towns themselves, suburban they might be, but 'white-hot' the communities are not, nor are they 'hubs' in any sense. In fact, 'backwaters' might more honestly describe them. Both are 10 to 40 miles from urban hubs.
Somewhat upscale they are, but they're both called home by aging boomers who are more likely to be grandparents than dynamic young urban professionals or the parents of school age kids.
But these retail sites are actually quite apppropriate for the Vole now. Microsoft is rapidly becoming the boring and obsolescent 'legacy' brand, so it couldn't have picked two better suburbs for its first stores to match that image. µ
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Ditto, 100%
"Apple came up with the Ipod...lets make a "Zune", and try and take over the audio player industry" ("hey kids, now you can be cool 'Zune-goons'").
"Google has search...lets buy out Yahoo, rip out its brain, and substitute 'Bing' to try and take over the search industry".
"Nintendo and Sony make game consoles...lets sell substandard "Xbox" hardware at a loss and try and take over the gaming industry."
(and so on for MS win mobile phones, office software, "ISO standard" document format, etc. ad nauseum). Now we have a "Me-2" branded store chain.
One thing you can't accuse Microsoft of - originality. Or being clever enough to learn from their past mistakes.
I've been to The Shops at Mission Viejo many times, and to call it backwater is pure ignorance. South Orange County may be nothing but a bedroom community, but the money there is ridiculous. Multi-million dollar homes are commonplace in the area. Most the economy of south county is fueled by consumers, there isn't much industry there. M-Soft could have put a store in South Coast Plaza and it might rake in more, but MV isnt a bad choice by any means and puts them in direct competition with the Apple store there.
I live in Mission Viejo, and there's really only one reason MS picked us to place their store -- money. The place is loaded with it. Try to find a house for less than 650K or an apartment that rents for less than 2K/month -- you won't find it. MS settles in where there's more money than smarts ... and waits to start hauling in the loot. :)
Also, don't forget that Dell and Hp also support other OSes such as Ubuntu and Suse respectively. Yes, the notebooks that come with pre-install linuxes are not many, but they exist out there and are available. So, putting in your store a brand that also supports your competitors is really stupid.
Again, as I see it, those MS stores are going to have just four divisions: The software division (Windows and Office upgrade packages), the music division (the Zune), the games division (Xbox 360), keyboards and mice ... and that pretty much all microsoft has! Yup, this deserves a trip to those stores. Absoltely...
And what the freak are they going to sell?
Isn't microsoft supposed to be selling most of it's products through other vendors?
I mean, they don't have microsoft branded computers. Nor microsoft smartphones. All these products reach people through other vendors such as Dell, Hp, Htc and so on. And what was the last time someone on this planet actually *bought* Office?
So, the only thing those stores are bound to sell are the Zune, the Xbox 360 and the update versions of Seven and Office. Yaun.
Unless of course they decide to include windows smartphones and windows notebooks and wma-capable stereos from those other vendors, but then it would look more like an electronics retailer like Best Buy rather than a dedicated store with all these brands in the store
I hate Apple and all things Apple but I would never in a million years buy a freaking Zune player.
I soooo feel sorry for the teens with boomer grandparents about to buy them the Zune for xmass :)
So if Mission Viejo is such a dull and boring backwater town, why does St. Eve of Jobs and his merry gang of trolls have a store there?
Don't worry lads, I'm sure Microsoft will see the error of their ways and open up a store in Harrow.