Microsoft closing all its retail stores

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adj2ent

DJ Extraordinaire
Oct 20, 2006
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Long Island NY
Microsoft is planning to close Its retail stores. They will 4 Microsoft Experience Centers in London, NYC, Sydney, and Redmond. I worked at the opening of two of the Microsoft stores where they had a huge concert in the malls parking lots. That was only 8 years ago. I am usually in the Microsoft store everytime I’m at the mall, even took my kids to a bunch of classes there and get my laptops tuned-up there. It seems Iike all of my favorite stores at the mall are closing, the Sony store, Tesla, Steiners, Brookstone and now Microsoft. Well, I still have the Apple Store.
 
Microsoft and others are fully committed to cloud computing - so, the notion of brick and mortar retailing was always a limited window exercise. It made sense in the booming economy to make your innovation and brands part of the retail experience. In a down economy that disposable income isn't going to be there. I also think there's a growing disparity in society between what was promoted as convenient AI and what has turned out to be security vulnerabilities and in some cases unauthorized data mining and surveillance. Going forward the new trend in technology might be: "Alexa - get the F** out of my house."
 
The issue for Microsoft stores, was the lack of Microsoft branded products. Once they got out of phones, they really only had tablets/slates and software that bore their name, unlike Apple, which has multiple lines branded and many are purely consumer products, so a store makes some sense.

As Bob said, the software is going "cloud" with Office 365 the focal Office product, so no need for a store.
 
This nothing new here. Some stores physically go out due to people being lazy and just shopping online. Especially when you can get a item for less than going in a store. I had to order a book online because the store I went to didn't have it. The thing is adjusting to the times to keep current with the changes in how to proceed in business, whatever the business is. Sadly that will cost people jobs. Now that means they have to look for work elsewhere. Hopefully they get another job somewhere so they can survive.

I agree with both of you about not just featuring their brand solely because you can only reinvent the wheel in so many ways. How long before someone decides that what they have is good enough and they don't need the latest thing coming out. Not to mention that it takes time to invent a new something. It's not every week a company can have something new to present to the public.
 
I guess you guys haven’t been in a Microsoft store recently because more than half the store was dedicated to Microsoft products, Xbox, Xbox demo area, classroom, service, and the rest other manufacturers' laptops. Although there is office 365, most buy the full regular office program. There is too much missing in office 365 regard to Excel, Word, PowerPoint when you do more complex things. I do recommend office 365 with the full office for the 1TB onedrive storage and integration between multiple machines, iPads & iPhones. Likely the demo, experience, and outreach will be now moved into their 4 MicrosoftExperience locations. I can’t say what the plan was from day one but I don’t think it was ever their plan to sell a ton of computers like the other chains. The lack of those cheap $100-$200 computers preclude thatl
 
I guess you guys haven’t been in a Microsoft store recently because more than half the store was dedicated to Microsoft products, Xbox, Xbox demo area, classroom, service, and the rest other manufacturers' laptops. Although there is office 365, most buy the full regular office program. There is too much missing in office 365 regard to Excel, Word, PowerPoint when you do more complex things. I do recommend office 365 with the full office for the 1TB onedrive storage and integration between multiple machines, iPads & iPhones. Likely the demo, experience, and outreach will be now moved into their 4 MicrosoftExperience locations. I can’t say what the plan was from day one but I don’t think it was ever their plan to sell a ton of computers like the other chains. The lack of those cheap $100-$200 computers preclude thatl
But who buys Xbox or Xbox games there? Games are mostly online. I just don't think there is a compelling reason to "shop MS" like there is Apple. When I worked at Hewlett Packard, they tried HP Stores, but it never went anywhere.
 
I guess you guys haven’t been in a Microsoft store recently because more than half the store was dedicated to Microsoft products, Xbox, Xbox demo area, classroom, service, and the rest other manufacturers' laptops. Although there is office 365, most buy the full regular office program. There is too much missing in office 365 regard to Excel, Word, PowerPoint when you do more complex things. I do recommend office 365 with the full office for the 1TB onedrive storage and integration between multiple machines, iPads & iPhones. Likely the demo, experience, and outreach will be now moved into their 4 MicrosoftExperience locations. I can’t say what the plan was from day one but I don’t think it was ever their plan to sell a ton of computers like the other chains. The lack of those cheap $100-$200 computers preclude thatl
Where do you get to buy a $100-200 computer? In a second hand computer store or thrift shop that buys and sells items? I was in Micro Center and they had a 2 gig computer in there for $180. What the hell is someone going to do with that? They have tablets faster and better than that. A kid wouldn't want that. Only person buying that is someone that doesn't know any better or just plain cheap.
 
The MS store in our mall could evaporate and if the employees were warned and got out in advance, not a single person would be missing.
 
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