Shifting strategy, Microsoft closed all its specialty stores and kiosks in the US, while over 80 full-retail stores remain
Daniel Rubino / Windows Central :
Context & Ripple Effects
This June 2019 trim is the first visible step in Microsoft's retail retreat: cutting low-traffic specialty stores and kiosks while keeping over 80 full-retail locations. The strategy looked selective at first — just weeks later Microsoft opened its first European flagship, a three-story store in central London with an entire floor dedicated to enterprise customers.
The endgame arrived a year later, when Microsoft announced the permanent closure of all Microsoft Store retail locations in favor of its online store. Bose's decision months earlier to close all 119 of its own stores showed Microsoft was part of a wider consumer-electronics pullback from physical retail, not an outlier.
First-order effects
- Specialty-store and kiosk staff in the US are directly affected as those locations close, while Microsoft consolidates its retail presence into the remaining 80-plus full-retail stores.
Second-order effects
- Mall operators lose a marquee tenant category as kiosks vanish, and rivals like Apple face pressure to justify large footprints whose sales are migrating online — the same math that drove Bose out of 119 stores.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, brand-owned retail survives only as experience and enterprise-showcase space rather than a sales channel — the London flagship's enterprise floor pointed that way before the 2020 closure made the online store the sole channel.
The trend: Consumer hardware brands are shrinking physical retail from a sales channel to a marketing expense, with Microsoft moving from kiosk cuts in 2019 to a fully online store by 2020.