Microsoft is permanently closing its retail stores:

Microsoft on Friday announced it will permanently close its 83 Microsoft Store retail locations. It will instead focus on its online store at Microsoft.com, where customers can go for support, sales, training and more.

Microsoft said its retail team members will help on the website instead of in store. A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC that all Microsoft employees will have the opportunity to stay with Microsoft.

“Our sales have grown online as our product portfolio has evolved to largely digital offerings, and our talented team has proven success serving customers beyond any physical location,” Microsoft Corporate Vice President David Porter said in a blog post. “We are grateful to our Microsoft Store customers and we look forward to continuing to serve them online and with our retail sales team at Microsoft corporate locations.”

Translation: Hardware is hard. We were a day late and a dollar short.

Also, alcantara was a really bad idea.

Microsoft tried to clone the Apple Store. It still hasn’t worked:

Microsoft’s stores have a warm decor, plenty of helpful staffers and an array of PCs, phones and devices. They could use a few more customers, though.

It’s hard to know exactly how the stores are doing since Microsoft won’t comment on either sales or traffic figures. It is fair to say, though, that it is not uncommon to visit stores in which workers outnumber customers.

In San Francisco, even the tiny Amazon kiosk a floor below often has more customers than the far larger Microsoft store.

This is a remnant of the Steve Ballmer Era Microsoft.

They can probably afford to keep them running, but I’d throw in the towel.

Peter Bright at Ars Technica on the new flagship Microsoft Store on Fifth Avenue:

There are still weaknesses of the Microsoft store compared to the Apple store; Apple’s stores are much stronger from a support and maintenance perspective, and this gives both Apple’s hardware and stores a kind of desirability that the PC world can’t currently match. Pointedly, Microsoft also lacks anything with the appeal of the iPhone. Overall, however, Microsoft is slowly developing a retail presence that makes sense, and it will attract new and more customers. The Microsoft stores are still first and foremost marketing exercises, but we don’t think it’s too long before customers will consistently outnumber the staff, putting the stores on the road to retail success.

Apple creates objects of desire.

It’s yet to be seen if people think Microsoft creates objects of desire too.

Because at the end of the day, it’s people who’ll be voting with their wallets.