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Ballmer: ‘We’ve got to beat’ Apple anyway, so let’s build retail stores right next to them

“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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