Microsoft to Open Stores, Hires Retail Hand

wsjtech ^ | 2-13-2009 | Nick Wingfield

[lainie]

Microsoft Corp. said it hired a former Wal-Mart Stores Inc. executive to help the company open its own retail stores, a strategy shift that borrows from the playbook of rival Apple Inc.

The Redmond, Wash., company said it hired David Porter, most recently the head of world-wide product distribution at DreamWorks Animation SKG, as corporate vice president of retail stores for Microsoft.

In a statement, Microsoft said the first priority of Mr. Porter, who is also a 25-year veteran of Wal-Mart, will be to define where to place the Microsoft stores and when to open them. A Microsoft spokesman said the company's current plans are for a "small number" of stores.

In a warehouse near its Redmond, Wash., campus, Microsoft created mockups for how Microsoft products might be displayed either in its own stores or in a retailer's.

It remains to be seen whether the effort can add some pizzazz to Microsoft's unfashionable image, which Apple has sought to reinforce with ads that mock its competitor. Mr. Porter, in a statement, said there are "tremendous opportunities" for Microsoft to create a "world-class shopping experience" for the company's customers.

[Fresh Wind]

Apple has not been convicted for being a monopoly using anti-competitive practices against competitors.

True. That doesn't mean the Microsoft conviction was right. And if Apple held 85% of the market, the same thing would have happened to them. That wouldn't have been right either.

Apple has the RIGHT to define how its copyrighted and patented intellectual property is used. That's protected in the Constitution.

Also true. So does Microsoft.

So what you're saying is that a little monopoly is OK and a Big Monopoly is bad.

I understand now.

[Swordmaker]

I understand now.

Obviously you don't.

Monopolies are not per se good or bad... it's how you got them and what you do with them that make that determination.

Microsoft used its operating system market dominating monopoly position, gained by market forces, to require, under threat of economic boycott, that third-party resellers of their operating systems NOT include fourth-party non-OS related software that competed with Microsoft's other software, such as their word processor and browser. That is anti-competitive, coercive, and illegal. That has been adjudicated by several courts and Microsoft has lost every time. It is now being tested again in Europe.

Apple is using its copyrights and patents, which are constitutional, time limited legal monopolies, granted by Article 1, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution allowing creators to benefit from creative work they have done, to control their intellectual property's sale and how it is used. What Apple is exercising is not an economic monopoly such as the one mis-used by Microsoft. Apple's use of their limited, legal monopoly is permissible, morally and legally; the other, Microsoft's use of their also legal monopoly, is impermissible, immoral and illegal.