Last week Microsoft announced that they will be launching a retail store experience. This move is no doubt drawing comparisons to Apple’s successful efforts in this area. Nobody, including myself, can venture to guess what this experience might look like. With its tightly controlled marriage of hardware and software Apple has a complete package. Microsoft doesn’t.
Not to worry! Microsoft has brought on David Porter (pictured), a 25 year Wal*Mart veteran to head up creating this retail experience. Um ... what?
These guys really should have paired this announcement with more information on the (hopefully) innovative partner that they’ve chosen to design these stores ... say IDEO or Rem Koolhaas.
For some reason “cool” never sticks to Microsoft. I’ve tinkered around with a Zune in a store and think it’s pretty cool — but have never seen one in the wild. The XBox was successful in gaining market share over Sony’s PS3 — but I don’t think that the Microsoft brand has really gotten the halo effect (no pun intended).
Who knows, maybe we’ll all be surprised just like we were when we saw Surface. I won’t be holding my breath though.