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Microsoft pop-up stores coming this holiday season

Microsoft is prepping for a busy holiday season by opening temporary pop-up brick-and-mortar stores in about a dozen cities in North America.

Mary Jo Foley
Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network.
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Mary Jo Foley
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Microsoft officials said earlier this summer that they planned to open a number of temporary "pop-up" holiday stores this year. At the time, they didn't specify where these stores would be.

  • Braintree, Mass.
  • Chicago (downtown)
  • Cleveland, Ohio
  • Manhattan, N.Y.
  • Miami, Fla.
  • Natick, Mass.
  • Portland, Ore.
  • San Antonio, Texas
  • San Francisco
  • St. Louis, Mo.
  • Vancouver, B.C.


Microsoft Stores sell Windows PCs, Windows Phones, Microsoft and third-party software, games, peripherals and more. Microsoft also is going to sell its recently announced Surface PC/tablets through its Microsoft Stores in the U.S. and through select online Microsoft stores, as well. The ARM-based Surface RT devices are set to be available October 26, the same day that Windows 8 will be generally available in retail outlets and preloaded on new PCs.
In the summer of 2011, Microsoft officials said that Microsoft planned to open 75 new Microsoft Stores in the subsequent two to three years. There are curently about two dozen Microsoft Stores. Apple currently has more than 300 retail stores worldwide.

Microsoft will have 44 permanent retail stores in place by the end of its fiscal 2013, which means by the end of June 2013, company officials said during Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in June of this year.

Even though there's still no permanent Microsoft Store in Manhattan, I'm glad to see we'll get at least a pop-up store this year in time for the holidays.

Update: I didn't see this when it originally was posted, but WPCentral had a similar story about the holiday pop-ups on August 2.

This story was first posted as "Microsoft holiday pop-up stores coming to NYC, San Francisco, Vancouver" at ZDNet's All About Microsoft blog.