Early in 2001, Apple launched one of its first market retail stores. It was predicted to be a humongous failure.’ Maybe it’s time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so differently.’ said Cliff Edwards on the May issue(2001) of BusinessWeek. And as we all know, it turned out to be the one of the wisest market decisions and the biggest Success for Apple so far.

 ‘Saks, whose flagship is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy (Charts) stores turn $930 - tops for electronics retailers - while Tiffany & Co. (Charts) takes in $2,666. Audrey Hepburn liked Tiffany’s for breakfast. But at $4,032, Apple is eating everyone’s lunch.‘

Microsoft having a severe bout of Apple envy, has come out of its age old cocoon, ready to try its hand at modernity and starting a retail chain for itself, making an attempt at matching Apple’s retail success. The company now after a prolonged delay would like to reach out to its customers and make their retail market presence felt. They are soon to announce a chain of retail shops exclusively featuring their products. The shop of course as we envision it would be filled with racks and racks of software and maybe a few mouse and keyboards decorating the shelves here and there. And yes, the MP3 Zune players. Forgive us for forgetting that with all the iPod rage around.

And yes, one can surely say there would be a few computers around. And the last but not the least, some unconfirmed new about ‘Windows Phones’ has been doing the rounds as well.