Microsoft to open retail stores near Apple's this fall
Microsoft is planning to open the first of its planned retail stores next to existing Apple stores this fall. — Kevin Turner, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer, told partners the news during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote on July 15.
Context & Ripple Effects
At the Worldwide Partner Conference on July 15, 2009, Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner confirmed that Microsoft will open its first retail stores this fall, deliberately sited adjacent to existing Apple stores. The move ends Microsoft's long reliance on third-party retail and OEM partners to reach consumers, and it puts the company's hardware and software in front of shoppers at exactly the point where Apple has spent the decade building its most defensible asset.
The timing matters: Apple is pressing every advantage it has right now — the [[a:none|iPhone 3GS]] launch, tightening iTunes control over rivals like Palm, and expanding carrier deals — while Microsoft's partner ecosystem, the very audience Turner addressed, watches its vendor step into a channel those partners occupy.
First-order effects
- Microsoft gains direct control of the customer experience for Windows PCs and its own devices, with each new store opening as a deliberate storefront-versus-storefront comparison against an established Apple location.
- Apple now shares its highest-traffic retail corridors with its largest software competitor, converting a monopoly on its own brand environment into a head-to-head pitch floor.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's retail push creates friction inside its own channel: the partners and retailers Turner was addressing at the conference now compete with their biggest supplier for the same walk-in customers.
- Apple's store format — staffed, service-heavy, product-complete — becomes the explicit template Microsoft is copying, raising the bar for what any consumer tech vendor must fund to stay visible at retail.
Third-order effects
- If the co-location pattern holds, distribution itself becomes part of the competitive moat in consumer technology: vertically integrated brands that control their own stores can price, merchandise, and support on their own terms, squeezing out vendors who depend solely on shared shelf space.
- Retail real estate strategy turns into a competitive weapon, with site selection next to a rival treated as marketing spend rather than overhead — a structure that favors companies willing to absorb store-level losses for brand positioning.
The trend: Consumer technology vendors are following Apple's lead in treating owned retail as core infrastructure rather than optional distribution, with Microsoft's entry marking the moment the model spread beyond Apple.