Microsoft Challenging Apple By Opening Stores Nearby

Copying the theme from Apple, Microsoft opens spacious stores.

Microsoft has slowly been opening stores as they move to create a presence in malls and shopping centers to promote their products. When they started this process, they did not have a large number of technology devices to be sold. But that is going to change very quickly with the coming Surface table form Microsoft. The current date for that to arrive is October 26th and is just in time for the holiday sales cycle. There is a certain amount of uncertainty as to just how well Microsoft will do with their tablet, but there is news that they are going to be expanding the number of stores to compete against Apple for holiday sales.

Microsoft is going to be opening 32 new stores in retail locations in the US and Canada. And if their current stores are an indication, they will be placing them in areas near to existing Apple stores. That seems to be how Microsoft is positioning themselves in retail locations. This is probably because of all the traffic Apple stores seem to attract in foot traffic. And if Microsoft can steal away some of that, it will help them in the promotion and sale of the new Surface tablet. And with Windows 8 coming out, that will not hurt either.

The Microsoft stores seem to have a similar look and feel to what Apple is doing. It sure looks like they have copied some of the great features contained in existing Apple retail locations. There is a lot of excitement in the stores, so they have capture some of the elements from Apple. Given that Apple is so into protecting what they have. what are they going to do about all this expansion of 32 stores? And with a similar look and feel, are they going to get the lawyers involved? It would surprise few people if Apple were to do that.

Maybe Microsoft should come up with something similar to the Genius Bar. That would make the stores complete with that feature. What do you think?