“If you thought that Microsoft was simply out to copy Apple’s popular retail experiment, experience, and success, you don’t know the half of it,” Alex Wilhelm reports for TNW.
Wilhelm reports, “Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, in an interview with Businessweek, outlined the reasons for the locational positioning: ‘[the stores placed near Apple’s as] the traffic is going to be there, and we’ve got to beat them anyway.’ That last clause, that Microsoft not only can, but must, beat Apple is rather telling.”
Read more in the full article here.
Ashlee Vance reports for BusinessWeek, “They had his dining room waiting. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s (MSFT) chief executive and one of the richest men in the world, often eats privately at a Bellevue (Wash.) steakhouse whose name remains, at the behest of his security guards, a secret. Ballmer uses the room to break bread with prospective partners, employees, and, on one frigid Northwestern evening in November, a reporter. Although the room has enough space to host a small bar mitzvah, on this particular night, there’s only one table, graced with four meticulously presented settings and located center-floor, surrounded by empty space. It’s here that Ballmer, 55 and worth about $14 billion, wages a twin battle on the reigning conventional wisdom that discounts Microsoft’s role in the new digital landscape—and on a pork chop and accompanying wedge salad.”
Read much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The man is some kind of a genius or something. Truly a wonder to behold. Microsoft shareholders should continue to just sit back and watch Ballmer work his magic.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jai Gill” for the heads up.]
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Complete and utter *********** can’t see what’s in front of him – if your going to copy the the best at least be better – piles & piles of office will not do the same as apple retail stores
Whenever I go into the microsoft store (on my way to the apple store) I always stop to tell a sales guy, “You know, it’s okay, there is no shame in copying from the best.” Then I walk across the hall to the apple store.
For a mall to have an apple store is a big deal, it brings in lots of customers. I think Ballmer will find that written into most lease agreements is the phrase, “and no stupid copy cat stores within 300 yards.” Similar to the way coffee shops negotiate their mall leases.
mac hack,
LMAO, so you are so unafraid of the MS ways that you make it a ritual to stop in to tell some worker that? There is a diagnosis for that. What a loser.
This guy’s in charge? Only a matter of time before Microsoft sinks into oblivion. Ballmer is Gates’ worst business decision ever. May he stay in charge to the end!
Only a matter of time before Microsoft sinks into oblivion.
No doubt. But first MoronoStooge has to burn through its cash. Putting up LOTS of Microsoft stores next to Apple stores is a great way to kill million$. More please! 😎
“[the stores placed near Apple’s as] the traffic is going to be there”
You know, that makes a lot of sense. +1 to Ballmer for going where the action is. Of course, this backfires if MS has no compelling products and the stores remain ghost towns.
(BTW, the link that MDN provides which shows a return on investment chart is misleading. I don’t think it includes the 4% MS dividend 😉 )
“You know, that makes a lot of sense.”
No, it’s actually completely insane.
The traffic is there for Apple. When the traffic got up in the morning, it collectively thought “You know what I’m NOT going to do today? Go out and buy some PC hardware”. The stuff being sold at the Microsoft Store is exactly what the traffic isn’t shopping for and has made the conscious decision to avoid.
It’s like expecting to steal customers away from the luxury yacht store by opening up an inflatable raft business right next to it.
True, but…
You (and I) are operating under the assumption that Microsoft’s products are so obviously inferior that it’s a waste of time to try to snag customers on the way to the Apple store.
But if you truly believe your products are competitive, setting up right next to your competition is the way to go.
It’s why Walgreens always tends to spring up right across the road from CVS, and vice versa.
——RM
Is this just the beginning? Will Samesung start opening retails stores right around the corner from Apple and MS stores?
I like his business decisions. I like them a lot.
Pretending to be at the same level…
I’m building my Yugo franchise next to the local BMW shop. Ka-ching!
LOL! OL!
…For as long as it takes…
So Say We All!
“and we’ve got to beat them anyway”
Oh yea, well Dream on Monkey Boy.
There is Noooooo way in ur wildest Dreams that with u @ the Helm of Microsucks that u will ever beat APPLE in Anything, (Never)
So just continue doing what ur doing, keep Flushing all that Cash down the Toilet.
(Listen Microsucks is “Persona non Gratta”)
Good Riddance.
For that matter, Balmer should take charge of Google, too.
Keep him as CEO. He’s a genius!
Ballmer. Skating to where the puck was. 5 years ago.
Sounds like Howard Ballmer is just around the corner from wearing Kleenex boxes on his feet and saving his nail clippings. “More blue cheese dressing – NOW! But be sure to hold the sweet cream!”
YMMY (year, not day)
Haven’t laughed so violently, so earth shattering since a long, long time. Thx buddy. You are a comedy genius. 🙂
I could only get halfway through the Business Week article. Reading about Ballmer in detail is like getting a root canal.
These days I’d say more like root planing on all 32
Yeah, the moment I saw the article was 7 pages long, I quit reading. That’s about six more pages of Ballmer than I can stomach.
——RM
In San Diego, the Microsoft store is about 4 doors down from the (recently-expanded) Apple store.
The Apple Store is so full of customers that I’m surprised the fire marshal is not involved.
The Microsoft Store has more employees than customers, the majority of both of which are clustered near the Kinect display. The total likely wouldn’t fill a medium-sized elevator.
Go Ballmer, for as long as it takes!
Applebee’s
TGIF
What a leach…
Dining at a private table..in the middle of a large empty room…reminds me of a scene from a gangster movie…or at least a paranoid villain. Wonder if he pats them down and has someone “taste” his food.
A little like Xanadu in CITIZEN KANE too, eating alone in echoy halls with no one else around, a pathetic image. Just shows you how distanced he has made himself from people and reality. I am sure NO ONE at Microcraps tells him anything but what he wants to hear.
Citizen Kane
If Ballmer persists in his Napoleonic delusions, he may need treatment at a high-quality facility. I recommend the Bellevue Hospital Center, First Avenue and 41st, Manhattan. They also have a renowned substance-abuse program.
Did you make sure to leave your positive impressions on your Yelp review?
But how are the pork chops?
Tastier than the ones served by the secret restaurant in the other Bellevue. But that’s not the hill anyone wants to die on…
You of all commenters should realize that the downswing CHOP effect is more likely to affect the PORK curve than the BRANE graph, resulting in a swelling of the BELLI index. Unless, of course, it turns out to be TOST on the BAGL surface.
On another tangent, I don’t get the reference in the story to the room having “…enough space to host a small bar mitzvah…” there’s no referent to how many people attend bar mitzvahs, large or small.
Finally: today’s cute definition: CIRCUMVENT (n) the hole in the front of boxer shorts worn by Jewish men.
Building your stores next to Apple’s to leech off of their foot traffic in the hopes that you’ll pull in a couple of suckers with your inferior offerings.
Microsoft: begging for Apple’s scraps since 1990.
+1
Pretty well written article. Seems to suggest MS is sort of getting it’s act together, but to me it looks like they’re doing it the exact same way they did windows. By duplicating everything apple does.
What was that other article on MDN had the other day? About the Narcissist as CEO failures? The description sure fits!
The Master of Missed Opportunities – Ballmer T. Clown. I am sure though “Laughing Boy” by this point won’t be laughing off anymore future Apple products. Any laughter from here on out will be of the nervous clueless variety. It’s funny to think such a high profile tech company like Microsoft continues to be run by clearly not the best guy, but the guy who was Bill Gates frat buddy in college. What a way to run a company…
I’m of the opinion that Microsoft runs itself like trench warfare, Ballmer is a useless figurehead and so are most of the rest o’ them bilious flatheads in so called management. Rotting cash cow is what it is, futurespeak is what it ain’t.
If you want a successful restaurant put it next to a successful restaurant.
i CAN’T BELIEVE THEY HAVEN’T FIRED HIM – WHAT A JOKE
Shhhhhh! Don’t give them ideas.
That’s a great idea! New Microsoft stores will mean more parking spaces for the Apple store!
lol.
Ballmer “often eats privately at a Bellevue (Wash.) steakhouse whose name remains, at the behest of his security guards, a secret.” It’s not like Apple folks have anything against Ballmer. We just love what he’s done with the company. Microsoft shareholders, on the other hand, …
“It’s here that Ballmer, 55 and worth about $14 billion…” If you can’t be smart, it’s good to be lucky. Not just in the serendipity of having the right college room-mate, but by having competitors like Yahoo who were too stupid to take the money and run. Had the deal (pushed by Ballmer) gone through, Microsoft would have been out over $30 Billion! And after the merger crashed and burned, Ballmer likely would have been pushed out, irrespective of his voting shares.
Pure spite and glut.
Wow! What he says is just pathetic. It definitely sounds as if Microsoft is running scared despite having major desktop market share with Windows PCs. I thought all of Apple’s products market share was just a rounding error. It will be interesting if Apple’s revenues are double Microsoft’s revenues this quarter. That’s a lot more than a rounding error.
well, he has one thing right- he is special. but people this special are usually locked away somewhere
Should Microsoft actually build something to put in the store to actually sell? Fou what they do make… Windows, Office, and Xbox can be sold from a simple kiosk in the middle of the mall.
Microsoft will never even come close to Apple! Can we say washed out, dried up, and dead! Clearly the pork chops don’t help spark any creativity! Oh, I just remembered as I got the salad wedge that I need to get a service pack released for all of my great customers who love me so they know I am doing something.
Wow. Ballmer ($14 billion) is worth 3x Steve Jobs ($5 billion). Wow. Just wow. MS must be printing money for him.
If Ballbeard gets fired, I want to do a letter campaign to bring him back. If it will take 100 years, I want him frozen when he expires, or better yet just his brain. Then in the future he can return to Microsoft with just the brain and special equipment so that we can hear his excellent business decision and directions for Microsoft.
I like Stevie’s strategy. Build all those new, expensive stores next to Apple’s stores. Make sure you go all out and spend as much as you can on each store. They’ll make great warehouses for all the M$ Windoze latest version of unsold phones and tablets. When Apple needs to expand its presence, it should be able to buy them up cheap at the bankruptcy sale.
Isn’t anyone struck that by dining on that pork chop, Balmer is proving once and for all that he is truly a cannibal?
same deal in the U Village Seattle store
crickets in the MS Store, with a ghastly mixup of different brands and arbitrary designations (gaming, business, etc). All arrayed on Apple-like wood tables. Despirited staff.
Meanwhile, across the parking lot at the Apple Store, a genial moblike scene, with a genuine vibe of interest and drive-to-buy
He’s still around? LOL!
norfolk, va store is full of useless standing around doing nothing employees ..bunch of dumb idiots …same or if not dummer that microsucks employees ..
Obviously, you’ve never been IN the Norfolk store. It’s always packed and the employees are very knowledgeable and helpful. If there’s a problem at all, it’s that the store is TOO busy…..when is Apple going to discover Lynnhaven Mall or Town Center in Va Beach?
lynnhaven mall packed with wanna gangsters ..low income bums ..if their going to put an apple store in virginia beach ..might as well be in pembroke mall where the old folks can atleast afford their products ..
btw, anyone here afraid of black people? ..if you’re are ..definitely do NOT go to the apple store in Norfolk, VA
that there proves I’ve been inside Macauthor mall ..hahaha
Another brilliant job of reporting from the front lines of the war between Apple fans and scum licking, lowlife panty wearing twists whose faces resemble the spotty punctuation they’re overfond of using
After his DISASTER of a performance at CES and this kind of answer to a serious business question, it’s time for Bomber to be retired – out of the business. His strategy is in full force where I live, where the Apple store is on the second floor of an upscale mall with usually 100-150 people in it all the time… Down the hall, same side of the walkway is Bomber’s graft hangout.. It’s almost twice the physical size and may have 10% of the customer traffic.. (measured last on Tuesday about 1:45PM)… Microshaft is goin down baby…!!!
PC sales down 8.6% in the US compared to last year.
Steve Ballmer “I like our strategy, I like it a lot.”
It’s really amusing to consider the fact, that 50% of the apple store visitors are windows users. Now their way to apple is nearer than before :))
That man is only able to design war games !
“We decided to get right next to the Indian village. We’ve got to beat them anyway and this is where their traffic is.”
— Gen. George Armstron Custer, brilliant tactician
Steve Balmer is the quntessential sick f*ck. Apple Stores near Microsoft stores should place a bucket of tomatoes near the door so Apple customers can lob greetings in Microsoft’s direction on the way to their cars.
No no no. That’s too China.
The major amusement is sitting in front of both stores and watching the customers in both stores. The MegaloShite customers have enough suffering in store (and without store) without handing them tomato throwing Apple fanbois as scapegoats for their poor taste in technology.
That’s too China—priceless!
The major amusement is watching in awe as you fabricate increasingly ingenious, milk-snorting sobriquets for the clueless and uninformed. Keep it up, champ!
“It’s here that Ballmer, 55 and worth about $14 billion (…)”
Mr Ballmer has accumulated 14 billion but he is not worth more than any other human being.
I have been thinking about buying a Ford as my next car. I have bought Japanese cars that don’t break for years. But when Ford features MS products in their cars, I wonder if the car is any good, when they make those kinds of decisions. I think I’ll stick with what I was doing.
And I’m sorry, the mystic of a private dining hall eating pork chops doesn’t captivate me.
I swear, if the xbox didn’t have such fun games I’d be 101% apple.
Ballmer reminds me of the Uncle Fester character from the Adams family.
Anyone know if the meat was cooked or did he just tore a part of the animal and started gnawing at the slap of meat? lol
I’ll bet breaking bread with Ballmer whist he breaks wind is really appetizing. He looks like a flatulence factory.
Every marketing major will tell you that placing a relatively inferior product line next to a better one, will only emphasize the contrast even more, and make the better product look even better, and the inferior product look even worse. Same applies for store locations.
the reasons for the locational positioning…
I could almost believe Ballmer is a double agent working for Apple. What a great idea. Put Microsoft crap right next door to Apple brilliance for quick customer comparison. I like that strategy. I like it a lot. 😎
The ‘switch to Apple’ now easier than ever! You were on your way to that new M$ store, you know-the one next to the Apple store. You had always wondered about what Apple was all about. Might as well stop in for a few minutes and look around, Its trivial to go to the M$ store from the Apple store. You go in; it’s so much different in here.Laid out nice, lots of employees helping customers. You listen and the employees seem to be really knowledgeable and helpful. Maybe I’ll stay awhile and check out a Mac Air, sure looks nice. I’m glad I thought of stopping in here. What was that I was going to do before I came in here?
Thanks Stevie Balmy 🙂
Is i just me or would Balmer look like Uncle Fester if you put a little eye shadow on him?
I wonder what dinner would be like with the tech industry “Jabba The Hut & Uncle Fester”? I can imagine it would be in a sealed air thought chamber to keep the toxic gasses from leakin to the public and causing a second ice age since the sun would be blocked out for the fumes they excrete! 😉