“Microsoft is in negotiations to open its first ever New York City retail store on Fifth Ave., sources told the Daily News,” Katherine Clarke reports for The New York Daily News. “The deal, at 677 Fifth Ave. near 53rd St., would give Microsoft a splashy presence on the top retail corridor in the country and put it just a stone’s throw from its biggest rival Apple’s iconic glass cube store.”
“The 8,700-square-foot, two-story space eyed by Microsoft was last occupied by luxury fashion brand Fendi, which departed the building last year for a spot on Madison Ave.,” Clarke reports. “Rents for ground floor stores on prime Fifth Ave., are the priciest in the nation and have been topping $3,500 per square foot in recent deals.”
“Microsoft has a track record of setting up shop near Apple stores, where it can go head to head with its competitor at close proximity. It has reportedly used that tactic numerous times at its Palo Alto outposts,” Clarke reports. “The company last flirted with New York retail in 2012, when it opened a temporary pop-up store in Times Square for the holidays. It’s been on the hunt for a more permanent home since then.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Believe it or not, Microsoft now has amassed some 100 retail stores in the U.S., Canada, and Puerto Rico. Every time we’re near one of Microsoft’s cavernously empty tombs, we look into it and find nothing but bored employees, crappy Windows PCs and assorted other Apple wannabe dreck, and a handful of abandoned kids playing with Xboxes (“Go in there and play games while we shop, Johnny.”)
These Apple Store knockoffs must be a “marketing expense” write-off at Microsoft. “Look, everyone, we’re still relevant! No, really, we are – look we have our own stores, too!!!” Microsoft desperately screams.
We cannot imagine any scenario in which these stores aren’t losing money hand over fist.
For how long can Nadella continue this charade?
Related articles:
Microsoft retail store traffic pales in comparison to Apple’s – November 26, 2010
Analyst: Apple Retail Stores mauling Microsoft; Since 2004 over 18m Windows users switched to Mac – April 28, 2010
Microsoft looks to double retail store ‘network’ to four; Denver and San Diego up next – April 01, 2010
Apple’s retail store network, 285 strong and counting, driving Mac sales growth; AAPL at $435? – March 22, 2010
Apple exec offers peek into retail roll-out; including ‘jaw dropping’ London and Shanghai stores – February 26, 2010
NPD: 48% of the money spent at U.S. retail on desktop PCs was spent on Apple Macs – November 25, 2009
Microsoft: You’re not cool; you’re the opposite of cool; stop making your employees dance (w/ vid) – November 17, 2009
Microsoft Retail Stores have to resort to free concert tickets to generate opening day crowds – October 30, 2009
Notes from Microsoft’s first retail store: ‘Cheap, disorganized, and poorly-located’ (with photo) – October 23, 2009
Microsoft’s Bizarro Universe: 8 years late; in garish color; featuring inferior products (w/ video) – October 22, 2009
Microsoft to mimic Apple (what else is new?) with ‘Guru Bars’ in retail stores – July 25, 2009
One of those MS stores opened up here, across the breezeway from a giant Apple Store that is always going gangbusters. It’s about ¼ the size and still it’s empty most of the time. I have yet to figure out what it is they sell to pay the rent and wages of the workers. People walk in and out, but I almost never see a MS shopping bag leave the store. If they buy anything, they’re hiding their purchases under their trench coats.
What is it that they do, do? to paraphrase Young Frankenstein.
Why, given Apple Stores are full of people and Microsoft are not, does Apple owns just one digit computer market share? I wonder…
1980s called. They want their market share facts back.
Counterweight that market share stuff with the profit margins of a typical computer. A PC makes around $15 per unit, so they have to sell train cars full of them to make any money. Apple profits about $230 per unit.
The PC industry fell into “the value trap” brought about the vicious competition that eviscerated so many companies. The race to the bottom gutted the market. CompUSA, buh buy. Circuit City, ciao baby. Gateway… who? Dell delisted from the stock market. Pink slips in the 10s of thousands.
And now… Windows 8, so bad, like Vista, that people are paying to downgrade the PCs to Win 7, but tough beans there, MS is pulling the plug on security patches on Win 7 in 6 months to force users into the dystopia of Win 8.
It’s a grisly picture. I feel an incipient paradigm shift coming, a subsonic trembling in the earth beneath my feet.
Yeah, I agree. But that doesn’t explain why this crowd doesn’t add up market share. Are this people inside this stores just admiring beautiful machinery, as in a museum, and getting out with no bags in hand? Apple Stores are not new, you know? Lustrums come and go and we (Apple, Inc. and fans) have just one digit market share to presume. The war isn’t over… and it won’t be over in a looooong, looooong time.
The stores aren’t full of corporate buyers, they are full of individuals. If you take corporate PC sales and leases out of the market picture, the story is a lot different. And the total computing device sales of Apple are increasing while the best news on the PC side is that the rate of decline in sales is slowing. Yes, the PC sales to individuals is still huge, but people have been waking up to Apple for a long time and it’s accelerating. MS has made it hard to love a PC.
Oh, my goodness yes, Apple Stores sell outrageous amounts of stuff. It’s not just a bunch of Lookie Lews.
Apple is 17 times more efficient than other retailers. A respectable take for the year per square foot on retail space is $300. Apple Stores haul in $6,000/sq. foot.
Apple Stores churn up so much money the average take for every single person who walks in the door is ~ $57. That’s a helluva admission ticket just to walk in the door.
The median for the top 20 retailers is around $780 and that’s including Tiffany at #2 with their ¼ million dollar ruby and diamond necklaces.
They need those big yellow Caterpillar tractors to move all that stuff out the doors.
True, iPad sales were terrible last quarter, only 13.3 million units compared to the astronomical figure of Windows Surface tablets of 500 thousand. (Insert facetiousness here.) The problem is iPads are too good and people don’t upgrade quickly. I skipped 3 generations before I got my iPad Air.
Are those tumbleweeds blowing across the floor?
They won’t have to worry about oxygen. Cause there will be plenty of that in their store.
A sad testament. Build stores next to the most successful retail stores in the tech industry and hope some of the overflow wanders in. It’s the “scraps from Longshanks table”. This is kind of old news. That’s been one of their new strategies for a while now. Pathetic.
That photo looks just like the mostly-empty store they opened a few years back, directly across the parking lot from Apple’s busy store in Seattle’s University Village shopping center. The Apple store in Bellevue Square mall – the one closest to Microsoft World Domination Headquarters – is just enormous (it started out years ago about the size of a postage stamp).
What is wrong with them? Doesn’t MS know how pathetic they look when they open stores near Apple stores? I thought they were going to hire smart people to run MS.
When Apple started the whole idea of retail stores, the critics howled about what a disaster and a mistake it would be. Ok, so they were wrong about Apple back the, but where are they regarding Microsoft stores now? I don’t see the doom/gloom stories in the tech press about this failed MS adventure. Did they just not notice?
They put one in a mall in Scottsdale AZ that is directly across the hall from the Apple store. They look like mirror images. Well except that one is empty and one is packed with people.