Is Microsoft the new Apple?

By Davey Winder
Saturday, 14 February 2009 16:04

Market

If imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery, Apple must have a warm fuzzy feeling as Microsoft attempts to clone it's business strategy.

Microsoft has announced plans to define locations and time frames for the opening of the first Microsoft Stores. Retail shops, Microsoft branded, Apple clones. Of course, it is highly unlikely they will be called Microsoft Stores, although your best guesses are welcome.

With former head of worldwide product distribution at DreamWorks Animation, David Porter, heading up the retail stores division, Microsoft is signalling a move away from the traditional (and now credit crunched to the hilt and declining in number) high street reseller business model it has previously relied upon.

Porter previously spent more than 20 years at WalMart so knows a thing or three about retail.
 
On the surface, of course, there is no love lost between Apple and Microsoft. There were those infamous Bean Counter adverts from Apple which poked fun at the Microsoft efforts to advertise Vista.

Steve 'Monkey Dancer' Ballmer has not been over generous in his praise  for the iPod, although Microsoft did release a dedicated iPhone app before making it available for the Windows Mobile platform.

Indeed, look at the details of the forthcoming Windows 7 release and you would be forgiven for thinking nothing ever changes: six different versions of the new OS? Sweet Baby Jesus on a moped!

But hold on a minute, while Microsoft might well be ignoring Apple as far as OS version simplicity is concerned, in other areas the two giants are getting much closer. First there was the news that Microsoft is moving into the online App Store world with Skymarket.

Now the perhaps not so surprising news of the forthcoming real world Microsoft Stores on the high street. Not so surprising because it actually makes good business sense, following Apple into this space with the Zune.

So does Microsoft really want to be just like Apple, or is there more to it than that? Analysis on page 2.

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