retail strategy

Google announced the long awaited Nexus One today, but the phone itself was only part of the story.

Google has decided to distribute the phone exclusively through its own web store, a misguided strategy I think will ultimately backfire on them.

My son needs a new phone, so yesterday at my suggestion, we took a trip to the local AT&T retail store to get a look at the options up close and personal.

Instead of eager sales people trying hard to sell us phones, we found they preferred to send us over to the Mall to retail partners Best Buy and Radio Shack.

Seems to me if you are going to spend the capital to keep a brick and mortar operation going, you might want to try to be a bit more enthusiastic about selling phones.

Why Are We Here?

You have to give Steve Ballmer and Microsoft credit. After years of sitting on the sidelines playing defense and catch-up, this year they have definitely been on offense.

Whether it's the ad wars, releasing Bing, the deal with Yahoo!, the retail strategy or its latest move, a deal with Nokia , the company known for being stodgy and slow seems to have finally awaken from its decade long slumber and is attempting to define the terms of the game.

To that end, Ive decided to grade Microsoft on each of these moves. Ad Wars - Grade: D While the company is trying very hard to redefine itself to a...

When Microsoft first announced their retail strategy back in February I wrote a post called Microsoft Retail Strategy Doomed to Fail and I haven't changed my view.

Today, it became clear that in the face of all common sense they are continuing to push forward with this wrong-headed idea.

Remember, Microsoft sells mostly software except for the Zunes (which haven't been exactly flying off the shelves) and XBox 360s.

The strategy with software around Azure and Office 2010 for the web appears to be headed for the Cloud. So why would they need to sell cloud software out of a brick and mortar...