Wow.
How badly does Microsoft want a piece of this market? At least half a billion dollars badly:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/
On a visit earlier this month to the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Goldberg says company executives told him that Microsoft, along with its carrier and manufacturing partners, would likely spend “billions” of dollars in the first year for marketing and development. Another source familiar with Microsoft’s manufacturer and carrier agreements says the company will spend $1 billion on the launch, half on marketing and half on other development costs.
To put that into some kind of perspective, $500 million is the size of Apple's entire annual marketing budget for all products. I've only heard estimates of what WinPho7 will cost to license, but the numbers I've heard suggest it will take 40-100 million handset sales to pay for a billion-dollar launch.
"The worst part about these reviews is they are [subjective]--and their scores often depend on how drunk you got the media at a Street Fighter event." — Mona Hamilton, Capcom Senior VP of Marketing
*Image indefinitely borrowed from BrainBoxLtd without his consent.
