Will Microsoft close all offline authorized stores in China? The number of stores in China has shrunk from 460 to 51 in four years

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2024-07-02 09:39The official account of CCTV

CCTV Beijing, July 2 (Reporter Niu Guyue) On July 1, according to the first financial report, it was reported that Microsoft will close all offline authorized stores across the country, and only retain the official website mall and Jingdong flagship store. In response, a Microsoft spokesperson said that Microsoft is constantly evaluating its retail strategy to meet the changing needs of customers, and Microsoft has decided to integrate its channels in the Chinese mainland market, and customers can still access Microsoft's comprehensive range of consumer products and services through retail partners and Microsoft.com.

In response to this news, the reporter contacted a number of Microsoft authorized stores in Beijing, Liaoning and other places, some stores have been closed in the past half a month, while others have not received a notice of closure and are still operating normally. The sales staff of the Beijing Xidan Joy City store authorized by Microsoft said that the store is currently operating normally, but "the company level should have received the relevant notice (of store closure) and has relevant preparations", and everything is subject to the news at the company level. The staff of the Dalian Tuojin street store of Microsoft's authorized store told reporters: "The store will be withdrawn on June 30. The staff of the Microsoft store in Beijing Xinzhongguan Shopping Center said that they had received a notice of closure about half a month ago, and the store had been closed. For online channels, the reporter asked the customer service of the Taobao platform "Microsoft China's official flagship store", and the customer service staff said that "the store has not received any notice related to store closure".

In fact, this is not the first time Microsoft has made a large-scale adjustment to its offline stores. In June 2020, Microsoft announced that it would close 82 directly-operated stores around the world, and only 4 stores in London, New York, Sydney, and near Redmond in the United States, where the company is headquartered, will remain as Microsoft Experience Centers, but no more goods will be sold in the stores. At that time, Microsoft did not have directly operated stores in the Chinese mainland market, but it had 460 authorized stores, experience zones, etc. According to Microsoft's official website in China, offline Microsoft authorized stores and 3C electrical retailer stores in the Chinese market will not be affected by the major adjustment in 2020 and will continue to maintain normal operations.

4 years have passed, and the reporter inquired about Microsoft's official store and found that there are only 51 stores left in China officially displayed by Microsoft. Only 7 of them are shown as "Microsoft Authorized Stores", and most of the rest are "Xbox Retail Experience Stores" and 3C electrical appliance retailer stores.

(Screenshot from Microsoft official store)

In 1975, Microsoft software started as a monopoly, and hardware is indeed not Microsoft's specialty. Microsoft's financial report for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 shows that in the quarter, Microsoft's revenue was US$61.9 billion (about 448.1 billion yuan), an increase of 17%, and its profit was US$21.9 billion, an increase of 20%. With the success of the AI model, Microsoft's total market capitalization has exceeded $3 trillion.

It is understood that Microsoft's revenue mainly comes from the following three departments: productivity and business processes (Office, LinkedIn, Dynamics) increased by 12% to $19.6 billion; Intelligent cloud (Azure, WindowsServer) grew 21% to $26.7 billion; More personal computing (Windows, devices, games) grew 17% to $15.6 billion, with Xbox content and services revenue up 62% year-over-year, with Microsoft attributing 61% of that to Activision Blizzard, which it acquired in October, while Microsoft's device revenue fell sharply by 17% again in the third quarter. Despite the launch of new Surface devices and the adjustment of the hardware mix, Microsoft's device revenue has been declining for 12 consecutive months.

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