Microsoft To Go Into Retail

Last week I wrote about how Microsoft was planning to come up with its own “App Store,” in addition to a more sophisticated version of its Windows Mobile OS, to tout itself in this week's Mobile World Congress. For most people, it's obviously a move to reclaim market share from its chief rival Apple. Deny as Microsoft might, their next move – going into retail – tells me just how worried the dudes at MS are about Steve Jobs and his gang.

Apple, for the record, has over 200 "Apple Retail Stores" operating worldwide. If you've seen these stores, they sport designs as sleek and sexy as the products they're selling. We don't have any of these Apple Retail Stores in Malaysia, Singapore or Thailand, but I am writing this as if we have a bunch of them Apple Retail Stores here... and I am like some Apple Retail Store expert. Yes, I know I can abbreviate Apple Retail Store, but that would just make this site lose it's "General" rating.

Anyway, these stores were one of the main reasons why Apple decided to make this year's MacWorld the last one they'll participate in – the stores, along with the Apple website and App Store, made it very easy for the company to reach their customers, and as such participating in an Expo wasn't really necessary anymore.

Yep. Steve sure knows what he's doing...

Apparently, the guys at Microsoft seem to think that opening their own stores and selling their products just might be what the company needs to regain lost glory. Though my expert opinion has always been that Microsoft really lost their edge a little before 1995, when they focussed too much of their R&D resources to make certain the CTRL-ALT-DEL keys were not underutilized.

As of now, Microsoft isn't too much into the PC hardware industry – the Zune music player and the XBOX are the farthest they've foraged into the retail consumer hardware war zone – but opening "Microsoft Stores" all over the world could see them moving into this industry within the next two years big time.

And realistically, I don't see why this can't happen. The Zune, despite unable to hold a candle to the popularity of Apple's iPod series, still has a loyal following. (Discount the infamous “Zune Bug” that rendered Zune 30's all over the world useless last New Year, and you'll agree it's gone through a fairly successful run.) It might be time for Microsoft to take off its gloves and venture outside the software market seriously, and play retail hardball.

After all, coming up with a smartphone of its own has been one of the previous year's most tantalizing rumors, second perhaps only to the mad rumors about an iPhone Nano. Many techies (me included) couldn't help thinking what having a ZunePhone would be like. OK, I lied. I never, ever wanna' own anything called a "ZunePhone".

Now, one of Apple's main weakness (at least to me... aherrmm) with the iPhone is that it's not open-source – as such, it runs the risk of obsolescence in the years to come, as open-source architecture gives way to more and more innovation.

And of course, if Microsoft decides to release its own open-source smartphone, then they'll be shifting their targets from Apple to Google. Dudes at Microsoft got their work cut out for them...