It's now safe to turn off your computer shop: Microsoft to shutter its bricks-and-mortar retail locations worldwide
- Reference: 1593181769
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/06/26/microsoft_store_shutdown/
- Source link:
[1]In a filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, the company [2]has announced what it calls "a strategic change in its retail operations".
Or, in other words, shutting down its network of physical Microsoft Stores and going digital-only via Microsoft.com and Xbox.
The company said it would be taking a pre-tax charge of approximately $450m to do the deed, which will show up in the quarter ending 30 June 2020.
The company closed its locations during March as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and put the retail team to work servicing customers online. Having spent the last few months at home, the gang won't be troubling the stores again and will instead build "a pipeline of talent with transferable skills" while continuing to look after consumers, small businesses, education and enterprise customers.
The four flagship stores at the company's own Redmond campus, New York, Sydney and the just opened London corner will remain and be "reimagined".
The move is unsurprising. Microsoft's physical retail adventure [3]began in the late 2000s as the company looked with envious eyes at the antics of rival Apple. Where the fruity firm flung iPods and Macs, Microsoft could offer [4]Zunes and PCs pre-loaded with Vista. It hasn't been a rip-roaring success.
Beginning of the end
The axe began swinging last year as the company [5]closed its network of US pop-up kiosks , with little notice being given to employees. Its flagship London store opened less than a year ago, but even a McLaren Senna sportscar in the window [6]failed to pull in the crowds .
David Porter, corporate vice president for Microsoft Store, [7]said "our hardware and software sales have continued to shift online" and with pretty much no consumer play left now, other than Xbox, keeping open a network of stores so punters can look at Surface devices before they pop next door for an iPad seems a bit pointless.
Never mind, you'll still be able to enjoy that retail experience if you live in New York, London, Sydney or have access to the company's Redmond campus. Otherwise, it's online-only if you can't make that shiny new Surface work.
RIP to Microsoft's physical retail stores. It's yet another marker in the company's consumer graveyard – not [8]too far from Mixer. ®
Sponsored: [9]The Forrester Wave™: Streaming Analytics, Q3 2019
[1] https://microsoft.gcs-web.com/node/28251/html
[2] https://news.microsoft.com/2020/06/26/microsoft-store-announces-new-approach-to-retail/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2009/02/13/microsoft_retail_store/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2007/01/22/zune_launch_schedule/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2019/06/04/microsoft_shuts_kiosks/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2019/07/11/microsoft_london_store_opening/
[7] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/new-day-microsoft-store-david-porter/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/23/microsoft_cans_mixer/
[9] https://go.theregister.com/tl/1956/-8460/the-forrester-wave-streaming-analytics-q3-2019?td=wptl1956
Track record
MS doesn't seem to have a good track record when it comes to copying and competing with the hipsters.
Silverlight never displaced Flash, now is practically dead.
Zune never fared well against iPods and died as a result.
Windows Phone never made much of a dent against iOS and is now dead.
Edge barely made any impact against Chrome and is now just a Chrome-alike clone in many respects.
Surface RT attempted to compete with iPads and was a dismal failure.
And now Microsoft Stores are dead having never had anything like the impact of Apple stores.
Maybe instead of coming late to the game and trying to copy and compete against an established rival product, MS should focus more on trying to come up with genuinely new innovations instead (stop sniggering back there!)
Re: Track record
To be fair to Microsoft, it's not just because they're copying other hipster ideas - it's usually because they botch them up and then mess up the marketing as well.
Re: Track record
And they can still screw things up even with all the juicy telemetry on what their systems are up to.
"Surface RT attempted to compete with iPads and was a dismal failure."
Just iPads are more and more like Surfaces, today....
Back in the day Microsoft were fairly good at Embrace Extend and Extinguish. Now they seem to even fsck(8) that up.
Same with this "Windows as a service" crap. They should stick to offline, enterprise deployments. Let Linux and all that go the route of slurping from an online package repo (This I feel is the one biggest weakness of Linux that Microsoft could cash in on)
Microsoft is flailing around and wasting everyone's time (as usual).
This is not exactly surprising, I imagine you'll still be able to buy Microsoft hardware at Best Buy (or your market's equivalent) so this won't affect anyone, except the people who lose their jobs that is.
I think MS's big problem (in terms of their consumer offerings) is they always have unrealistic ideas of what they're going to achieve, and once they realise they're not going to achieve market domination in every sector then they just give up on things, be it hardware, software, services or shops.
Zune didn't displace iPod - dropped
Windows Phone didn't triumph over iOS/Android - killed off
MS Stores didn't manage to replicate the attraction of Apple Stores - shut down.
I'm not saying MS should keep pumping money into failing projects, but fundamentally there's been nothing wrong with some of MS's killed-off offerings, but MS still seem to believe they can just be number 1 at everything without trying. Instead no-one now wants to commit to any part of the MS consumer eco-system knowing that odds-on MS will lose interest and drop it within 12 months.
Zune.
Zune was produced for 5 years before it was dropped, and I believe the reasons were that it had failed to grab significant market share, wasn't even in the top 5 devices, and that a study showed that everyone was switching to using smartphones for music consumption.
And let's not forget that Apple dropped support for iPod classic *and* the iPod nano that had a wheel and screen in favor of a phone-like device (in one case that was laughable small).
Because everyone was going towards phone-based music (and Apple would love you to switch to a music rental model like Amazon and the music industry in general would).
Stick to what they do best....
....showing up once a year in the Enterprise and shaking down corporate customers for more money.
They were never going to stay in business...
...if people came in just to Windows shop.
edit: yes, I stole that from /.
Marketing 101
First rule of marketing is to understand your customers who are likely a varied lot. This means knowing each segment well and understanding how to approach each segment. If you are going to sell to consumers a house brand (Surface e.g.) it has to either be a genuine bargain or possess a wow-factor to stand out against the OEM products. As far as captive retail stores, they work for a fruity outfit as they are one the major outlets for the entire product line (trying finding Macs at Wally World (Wal-mart) or the like). But for the Rejects of Redmond Wally World, et. al. carry numerous moderately priced models from a variety of manufacturers. So to go to a captive retail store is probably point less as there is real advantage as consumer.
The Rejects have a long history of aping someone's successful ideas or products without understanding why the idea or product is doing well. This is why there is a long list of abandonware, you can't copy an idea or product and have be successful you have to understand the idea or product. Understanding takes real work while copying is easy.
Re: Marketing 101
Macs are available at Costco, Walmart, and, if iPad Pros count, BJ’s. Not at Target, though.
Microsoft store Vs Apple store
I think part of the benefit of Apple's stores is that they use it as a location for convenient tech support. If people know they can take their Apple devices to a local place, have someone look it over, and explain to them what is going wrong, they will probably stop by. If you already started that part of the project, you might as well also have new Apple devices on hand to show them off and so the user can buy a replacement when the tech support person tells them that their old one is broken.
Meanwhile, I don't know how restrictive Microsoft stores are about tech support. Maybe they're exactly like Apple, but even if they tried, their job is much harder. There is no way a standard Microsoft store employee will have all the diagnostic tools on hand to identify and fix hardware problems in laptops not made by Microsoft, and if they tried to create that capability it would be very expensive. Furthermore, I'm guessing that coming to their store and asking for help wasn't quite as easy as it is for Apple users. I tried to figure out for sure but all their pages have been changed to reflect work from home and the details aren't showing on the wayback machine. Since fewer users are coming for technical support, there are fewer people with broken machines to which replacements can be marketed.
Isn't it obvious......
I know why Microsoft fail.
With shops such as Apple, Ann Summers, and Jewellers, they all sell something people lust after, that you want to get your hands on.....
Microsoft sell something crepe, or something you have to use, like toilet roll, (although Xbox, Xbox360 were ok, then they messed up with Xbox One).