“For us it’s about sitting down and educating you”, says David McAughan, COO for Microsoft retail and online stores.
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As you would imagine the store is mainly created to show off the newest services that Microsoft has to offer. It’s located near the famous Fifth Avenue Apple store, but that’s not where the similarities end.
The first floor gets decked with LED light panels on the sides, with the company’s latest products lying out there for customers to get their hands-on experience. There’s also space at the front of store visible to onlookers, where customers can play Xbox games on an 84-inch monitor.
The Surface Book is now available, and with it comes a new “Making the switch” site from Microsoft targeted specifically at Apple’s MacBook owners.
The large property also allows Microsoft to deploy “store inside of stores” and will feature products from its partners, including Dell. This, he believes, makes it a good idea on Microsoft’s part to have the New York store focus on the Surface brand.
Also on display is HoloLens, Microsoft’s futuristic looking glasses that lets users see holograms, though before rushing there to see it, customers can look but not touch.
Amazingly, Microsoft managed to keep one of the key, differentiating features of its first laptop, the Surface Book, from being leaked. Two cables attach the display instead of one, and the screen is just 4mm thick – even though we found the PixelSense tech to be much more impressive than the display on the Surface Pro 3.
Apple designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers.
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The neat, modern Microsoft flagship store still feels like a regular Microsoft store, it is only bigger and better. It’s exactly the kind of store you would expect to find in a city like New York. Apple’s 460 stores generate $4,798.82 in sales per square foot on an annual basis – the highest of any retailer in the United States and way ahead of its closest rival, luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co, which generates sales of $3,132.20 per square foot.
