MICROSOFT STORE USA

The Microsoft Store is a chain of retail stores and an online shopping site, owned and operated by Microsoft and dealing in computers, computer software and consumer electronics. The stores aim to "improve the PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide and help consumers make more informed decisions about their PC and software purchases."

The Microsoft Store offers Signature PCs from third parties such as HP, Acer, Dell, Lenovo, and Sony without demos or trialware (pre-installed free trials of certain third-party software that expire after a limited time). It also offers Windows (most retail versions), Microsoft Office, mobile devices running the Windows Phone 7 OS, Zune devices and services, Xbox 360 consoles, games and services including on-site Xbox diagnostics. The Answers Desk helps to answer questions related to Windows, Office, and other Microsoft products. The stores also offer class sessions as well as individual appointments.

The first two Microsoft Stores opened within a week of the Windows 7 launch, in Scottsdale, Arizona and Mission Viejo, California. Additional stores have since opened in California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Texas and Washington. At the 2011 PDC, Microsoft announced that they intend to open 75 new stores in the next three years

FERRARI ITALY

FERRARI STORE

OFFICIAL STORE OF FERRARI MILANO ITALY

Ferrari S.p.A. is an Italian sports car manufacturer based in Maranello, Italy. Founded by Enzo Ferrari in 1929, as Scuderia Ferrari, the company sponsored drivers and manufactured race cars before moving into production of street-legal vehicles as Ferrari S.p.A. in 1947. Throughout its history, the company has been noted for its continued participation in racing, especially in Formula One, where it has had great success. Ferrari road cars are generally seen as a symbol of luxury and wealth.

store.ferrari.com is the only official Ferrari S.p.A. online shop.

Here you can purchase the articles that you desire in an extremely simple and swift way, sitting comfortably at home. Our couriers will deliver the goods to the address provided.

The store.ferrari.com site is designed to provide a service that is ready to meet your every need, allowing you to purchase top quality articles and have them delivered to your door. 

You will also be able to access information on all the products marketed by the most famous automobile brand in the world.

store.ferrari.com is not only a virtual shop; it is much more.

It is a space where values common to our company and all those inspired by the Ferrari world co-exist.

It is the dimension in which a timeless myth presents the most creative and liveliest aspect of its character.

The site is designed to provide store.ferrari.com attentive service to your needs, not only allowing you to purchase high quality items from home, but also to take advantage of information relating to the products of world's most popular automotive brand. 

WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF FERRARI

RDIO INTERNATIONAL

Rdio is the ground-breaking digital music service that is reinventing the way people discover, listen to, and share music. With on-demand access to over 15 million songs, Rdio connects people with music and makes it easy to search for and instantly play any song, album, artist or playlist without ever hearing a single ad. Discover what friends, people with similar tastes, recording artists and more are listening to in real-time and share across Twitter and Facebook. Build a digital music collection that’s available everywhere - on the web, in-home or in-car, on an iPad or smartphone, and even offline.

Launched in August 2010, Rdio is headquartered in San Francisco and was founded by Janus Friis, one of the creators of Skype. Currently available in the US, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Denmark, Rdio is funded by Atomico, Janus Friis through his investment entities, Skype and Mangrove Capital Partners.

Drew Larner, CEO

Drew has 20 years of experience in entertainment, media and international content distribution. He has been a senior executive at companies including Europlay Capital Advisors, Spyglass Entertainment and Twentieth Century Fox.

KOBO E-READER CANADA

The Kobo eReader is an e-book reader produced by Toronto based company Kobo Inc. The original version was released in July 2010 and was marketed as a minimalist alternative to the more expensive e-book readers available at the time. As of March 2010, fifty eight percent of Kobo Inc. had been owned by Indigo Books & Music; however the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten bought control of Kobo in January 2012. Like most e-book readers, the Kobo uses an electronic ink screen

Kobo Inc., an anagram of 'book', announced its first eReader on 24 March 2010 at the CTIA show. It was officially released on 1 May 2010. It had an expandable memory, holding an additional 4GB via an SD slot and limited wireless connectivity via Bluetooth to select Blackberry wireless devices. It was available in either black or white and came preloaded with 100 public domain books. This eReader was manufactured by Netronix Inc., aTaiwan based company with factories in Taiwan and China.

The pricing strategy of the original Kobo, at USD$149, was to rival the Amazon Kindle, which was USD$110 more expensive. However, in June 2010, just after the Kobo was released, Amazon dropped the price of the Kindle to USD$189. Its pricing strategy in Australia was similarly aggressive where it was available for AUD$199, again AUD$100 less than the Kindle. Borders Australia said that they hoped to sell high volumes of the Kobo to drive up sales at their e-content store.

The original Kobo received a mediocre review from CNET, which said that, while the Kobo was compact, lightweight and affordable, the lack of Wi-Fi or3G made it outdated, especially when there were similarly priced eReaders available with those features.

In December 2010, the original Kobo's feature set was updated with a firmware update to more closely match the Wifi model.

I TUNES AND MAC APPLE STORE USA

The iTunes Store is a software-based online digital media store operated by Apple Inc. Opening as the iTunes Music Store on April 28, 2003, it has been the largest music vendor in the United States since April 2008, and the most popular music vendor in the world since February 24, 2010. It now offers over 28 million songs, videos and apps. The iTunes Store's revenues in the first quarter of 2011 alone totalled nearly US$1.4 billion; by October 4, 2011, the store had sold 16 billion songs.

While most downloaded files initially included restrictions on their use, enforced by FairPlay, Apple's implementation of digital rights management, iTunes later initiated a shift into selling DRM-free music in most countries, marketed as iTunes Plus. On January 6, 2009, Apple announced that DRM had been removed from 80% of the entire music catalog in the U.S. Full iTunes Plus availability was achieved on April 7, 2009 in the U.S., coinciding with the introduction of a three-tiered pricing model; however, television episodes, manybooks, and films are still FairPlay-protected. As of May 2012, the iTunes Store serves over 315 million mobile devices, including iPods,iPhones and iPads.

The Apple Retail Store is a chain of retail stores owned and operated by Apple Inc., dealing in computers and consumer electronics. The stores sell Macintosh personal computers, software, iPods, iPads, iPhones, third-party accessories, and other consumer electronics such as Apple TV. Many stores feature a Theatre for presentations and workshops and a Studio for training with Apple products; all stores offer a Genius Bar for technical support and repairs, as well as free workshops available to the public. Under the leadership of Ron Johnson, the former Senior Vice President of Retail Operations, the Apple Stores have been responsible for "[turning] the boring computer sales floor into a sleek playroom filled with gadgets". As of January 2012, Apple has opened 363 stores worldwide.

eMUSIC USA & UK

eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed amount of tracks to their MP3 players per month. It was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York City with an office in London and is owned by Dimensional Associates.

eMusic was the only other provider of music to iPods other than iTunes due to it offering DRM-free music to its customers.

eMusic caters to knowledgeable music lovers in their 20's to 50's, who mostly purchase downloads of albums as opposed to individual songs, and utilize the site's hundreds of original articles and reviews each month. As of March 2011, eMusic has more than 12 million tracks up from 9 million tracks in September 2010. New subscribers can take out a 7 day trial before taking a full subscription. The trial account turns into a billable subscription account after seven days. Refunds are possible under certain circumstances by contacting eMusic customer support. Subscriptions allow users to download a number of tracks per 30-day period.

eMusic currently offers a number of Membership plans, including Basic, Plus, Premium and Fan in exchange for a monthly fee.

Every 30 days the download limit is reset (regardless of how many songs were downloaded). eMusic also offers "booster packs" to subscribers, which expire after 90 days rather than after a month, and are consumed when subscribers download tracks beyond their monthly allotments. Earlier business models prior to Dimensional Associates' ownership supported an "all-you-can-eat" download subscription. For a monthly fee, customers were able to download as many tracks as they wished from the service.

GO DADDY USA AND UK

Go Daddy is an Internet domain registrar and Web hosting company that also sells e-business related software and services. In 2010, it reached more than 45 million domain names under management. 

Go Daddy is currently the largest ICANN-accredited registrar in the world, and is four times the size of its closest competitor.

Go Daddy started advertising in the Super Bowl in 2005. Since then, the company expanded its marketing to include sports sponsorships.

Go Daddy filed for an IPO in 2006, but later canceled it, due to "market uncertainties". In 2011, Go Daddy confirmed that KKR, Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures had closed a private equity deal.

Go Daddy was founded in 1997 as Jomax Technologies by Bob Parsons, a former US Marine. He had previously sold his financial software services company, Parsons Technology, Inc. to Intuitin the mid-nineties for millions of dollars and took a very early retirement. The company Jomax changed its name to Go Daddy in 1999 when a group of employees were brainstorming on a more memorable name than Jomax Technologies. Someone said, "How about Big Daddy?" A quick check revealed that the Internet domain of that name was taken. Then Parsons said, "How about Go Daddy?" The name was available, so he bought it. Executive Chairman and Founder Bob Parsons states the company stuck with the name because it made people smile and remember it.

Go Daddy has grown to become the largest ICANN-accredited registrar on the Internet. In 2001, soon after Network Solutions was no longer the only place to register a domain, Go Daddy was approximately the same size as competitors Dotster and eNom.In April 2005, it surpassed Network Solutions in market share in terms of total domain names registered.

In 2002, Go Daddy sued VeriSign for domain slamming and again in 2003 over its Site Finder service. This latter suit caused controversy over VeriSign's role as the sole maintainer of the .com and the .net top-level domains. VeriSign shut down Site Finder after receiving a letter from ICANN ordering it to comply with a request to disable the service.^[13] In 2006, Go Daddy was sued by Web.com for patent infringement.

In 2007 and 2008, the company lobbied in favor of legislation that would crack down on unscrupulous online pharmacies and child predators.

In March 2010, Go Daddy stopped registering .cn domains (China) due to the high amount of personal information that is required to register in that country. Some called it a public relations campaign, since it closely followed Google's revolt in China