Apple has done well with their retail stores, are there other technology companies that could do the same?
Its possible, but I don't think its too probable. I heard awhile back that Microsoft was going to open up some stores, and that made sense to me from a marketing perspective, but not from a sales perspective - they just make so much money from their deals with OEMs like Dell, I doubt it would make any substantial business. Besides, if I recall correctly, they own a decent chuck of BestBuy, so in a sense they already have their hands in retail.
Today I read some rumors about Amazon.com opening up brick and mortar stores. If anything, I'd guess that they would go keep going in the opposite direction - towards eBay's business model - allowing individuals and small businesses to build stores on top of their technological infrastructure. That brings up a good point too - Amazon's technological infrastructure includes their "Amazon Web Services", about as far as a business model can get from retail!
