“Apple is building a big, visually stunning store in the Stanford shopping center,” Billy Gallagher reports for TechCrunch. ‘A few hundred yards from the construction site sits a small, modest Apple location. Last spring, Microsoft opened a flagship spot right next to the small Apple store with a free Maroon 5 concert.”
MacDailyNews Note: That’s the only way Microsoft gets people to line up. People line up at Apple Retail Stores to buy Apple products. People line up a Microsoft Stores for free concerts and/or concert tickets.
“Whether for pure dollars and cents or for appearances (maybe both), Apple has been very aggressive in Palo Alto in the past couple of years,” Gallagher reports. “The company had a very nice store on University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto; in October 2012, they moved down the street to an even bigger, more prominent location.”
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Gallagher reports, “Now, this new store in the Stanford shopping center is supposed to become one of the company’s flagship stores.”
Read more, and see the construction photos, in the full article here.
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Apple wannabe Microsoft paying people $100 to line up for Surface tablets at retail stores – October 26, 2012
Hundreds line up for Microsoft Store ‘grand opening’ – for free concert tickets (with video) – October 23, 2011
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Microsoft opens 4th retail store near Apple’s on iPhone 4 day; lures people with free concert tix – June 24, 2010
The big middle finger to microshaft… Love it!
Microcraps is now just another lonely shack next to the soon-to-be-crowded Apple monolith.
And the beat goes on.
I never understood why Tim wants to give back billions of $ to the shareholders like me instead of announcing a 10-20 billion retails program to set up hundreds and hundreds new stores worldwide. May be there are a lot in the US, but outside the US there are only very few. In Germany alone would be a market of at least 30, and possibly 50 instead of just the 10 or so as we have over here.
Apple is doing both.
Apple does much demographic and retail research before picking locations and committing to stores and their locations.
Frankly, sometimes Apple seems to be very slow. The great Berlin store is at least 10 years late. What kind of research do they need if there is a city like Berlin with a population of 3 million, and no Apple store. This is quite simple maths how much an Apple store is needed for a place like this. It simply can’t go wrong. There are plenty of German cities with a catchment area of 1 to 3 million people.
Patience young grasshopper… patience.
If running a company like Apple and making descissions was as simple as the knee jerk comments that the common everyday layman ( or woman) don’t you think every company would be a fotune 100 company and they all would be doing as well.
Just because you don’t understand th kind of research and detail involved in scouting and poring over details and market research that goe into Apple’s premium real estate, locations, dempgraphics and urban planning/ zone considerations, doesn’t mean a thing.
If you look at what they’ve done with the Ku’damm store, they’ve dealt very sensitively with an old Berlin location – a city that tries very hard to preserve its heritage given how much of it was torn apart by conflict in the closing stages of World War II.
There are two locations you want in Berlin: Ku’damm and Freidrichstraße; I’d argue that the latter is more touristy, and the former a location for real ‘Berliners’.
But what Ku’damm does is write a line in a sand for Germany’s big Apple-supporting retail channels: particularly Gravis at Ernst-Reuter-Platz who really have carried the standard for the brand in Germany for many years.
What an idiotic headline. Like Apple gives even 2 seconds of thought as to where the nearest Microsoft store is….
Headline: Apple replacing smaller stores with larger stores worldwide.
Visited new Ala Moana (Honlulu) MSFT store yesterday. 1/2 size of Apple store just across from it. Was crowded. However, confirned 3 things re RT tablet. The click is not as loud and snappy as shown in the commercials, the keyboard cover sucks. the keyboard cover comes loose with a hard shake. Other observations. Too many differeneet products in a crowded space. Acer, Dell Nokia, HTC et al. Inventory management will be a nightmare. Customer will be totally lost unless they know in advance what they want.
Any customer who knows what they want will be in the Apple Store.
While the headline may be MDN’s doing, don’t think for one second that Apple doesn’t “give even 2 seconds thought” when it comes to Microsoft anything considering Apple’s history. What was that whole “I’m a PC / I’m a Mac” thing. When Apple talked about their OS, why did they bring up MS Vista’s attempt to be more Apple like but “didn’t get it quite right” according to Bertrand Serlet…
Now Apple may not be worrying about what Microsoft is doing but that doesn’t mean that Apple won’t throw out a ‘zinger’ every now and then in any way it can against its friends up in Redmond as evident in the two youtube video links attached…
Apple doesn’t even have to sit up to overshadow Microsoft.
Ballsmear will have a fit. He will issue out a command from his minions to rebuild his fortress of idiocy by way of stacking one big one top of the existing smaller one. It will be an architectural 10th wonder of the world. A big giant building sitting on top of a small building. It will bring natural shade and cover from rain. Free 10,000 Mily Circus tickets for re-grand opening.
Lifecycle of a Microsoft store:
(1) Tickets.
(2) Crickets.
Billy, another guy that smokes.
I don’t think Apple cares anything about what MS is doing. That’s not a good way to operate.