Microsoft's retail stores have had more than 15 million customers visit to date, the company revealed in a blog post this week.
“We’ve welcomed more than 15 million customers and counting so far, and have learned a lot from them,” Jonathan Adashek, Microsoft's GM of Communications Strategy, said on the company's blog as part of a larger post about the growth of Microsoft's retail strategy. “Having this direct connection to our customers has really helped us better understand their tech needs.”
Microsoft opened its first retail store in 2009 and now has 30 locations in the United States and Puerto Rico. The stores themselves are often compared to Apple's retail stores -- indeed, Microsoft hired a former Apple retail exec to help figure out its retail strategy in 2010.
While Microsoft's store traffic so far seems impressive, it still has a long way to go to catch up with Apple. It took Apple just one year to attract 15 million customers to its retail stores, compared to three years for Microsoft.
Apple now gets 300 million visitors to its stores each year and had an average of 19,000 visitors per store each day in the September quarter. To be sure, much of that has to do with the sheer number of Apple Stores. The Cupertino company launched 57 stores in the U.S. after one year and now has 390 retail locations around the world.
[Via TheNextWeb]