Microsoft has recently announced that it intends to open several stores across the United States, in order to retail its software and hardware products. In order to do this, the Redmond giant hired a former executive at the retail giant Wal-Mart.

David Porter was assigned to create a development plan and decide where the stores would be opened. Porter worked at Wal-Mart for 25 years. Before he was hired at Microsoft as corporate vice president for retail stores, he had been working at the distribution department of DreamWorks Animation.

A representative at Microsoft pointed out that David Porter will decide when the stores will be opened and that the company is planning to open only a “small number” of stores for the beginning.

The Redmond-based company highlighted its idea of a retail store in the past. Microsoft took a storehouse near Redmond, Washington, and transformed it into a concept retail store with a surface of about 21,000.00 square feet.

Microsoft reiterated that the company sees great opportunities in opening a retail chain. A representative said that it would be good both for the company and for the costumers to offer the latter the possibility to browse through all Microsoft and Microsoft-related products, such as software, peripherals and Windows-powered laptops.

Some analysts believe that Microsoft is pursuing the same commercial success of Apple when the Cupertino-based company opened its Apple stores back in 2001. Currently, there are over 200 Apple stores worldwide, which offer all of the company’s products in one place. Some say that part the company’s current popularity comes from this retailing strategy.