That outdoor mall also boasts an Apple retail store. Microsoft's strategy has been to place its retail stores in the same malls or shopping centers as existing Apple stores, sometimes in very close proximity. Although Salt Lake's City Creek Center noted that the Microsoft store was in the works, it did not locate the store on its mall map.
The San Francisco store, one of the mutated pop-ups, will be Microsoft's first in the city. The current closest outlet is in Marin County. Microsoft's San Francisco store will be about a block from one of the city's three Apple stores.
With the addition of the six new stores, Microsoft will soon have 37 permanent storefronts in the U.S. and Canada. However, its total of 67, including the remaining pop-ups, is only 17% of Apple's 390 stores worldwide as of last September.
Two weeks ago, Microsoft also expanded its retail footprint to a pair of U.S. chains, Staples and Best Buy, to sell its Surface tablets, and announced it would add retail partners in several other countries in the near future.
Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer, on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg's RSS feed. His email address is gkeizer@computerworld.com.
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