“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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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.