The hottest rumor floating around the mobile phone and tech business right now is that Microsoft is about to spend between $400 million to $1 billion dollars on a advertising marketing campaign to promote Windows Phone 7. The rumors themselves are giving Microsoft millions of dollars worth of free publicity.

icrosoft, despite inventing the smart phone business years ago, has never had any vision beyond putting some form of Windows on a phone platform with no regard to the form factor or user needs. To me this attitude continues with Phone 7 for no other reason than the moniker Phone 7.

We have Windows 7 and Phone 7. This doesn't sound like much of a conceptual breakaway, does it?

But Microsoft (MSFT 23.93, +0.11, +0.46%) has high
hopes with a report from the ReMix conference in Paris where Microsoft was hinting at selling 30 million of these new phones by the end of next year.

Oh yes, this is going to be a fun one to watch! I would like to remind everyone about the recent Microsoft Kin phone fiasco.

In 2009, according to Advertising Age, Microsoft was the No. 32 company in nationwide advertising spending just over $1 billion. Compare that to No. 87 Apple Inc. (AAPL 241.62, +1.34, +0.56%) with its $377 million expenditure and ask yourself which
company got more bang for the buck.

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Full article here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/low-hopes-for-microsofts-phone-7-2010-08-27

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Personally, I think the operating system will be a really cool product, but, as the article points out, that probably won't matter much - from a marketing point of view, and for third party software developers - Microsoft might not have what it takes to win consumers and developers over - frankly, we haven't seen much evidence of them trying to win developers over, outside of the games market. They're probably hoping that sales of the device will attract developers - like it did with Android and iPhone - but, now it has switched - the sales won't come without the apps. It could be too late for Microsoft.

A similar thing has happened with the Zune HD. I own one, I paid a premium because I needed to import, and, personally, I love the device - but it has failed to penetrate the markets in a massive way. It's still a fraction of the iPod touch. Ask people why they so frequently choose the iPod over the Zune: it's the apps. And the need for apps is even stronger in the smartphone market than it is in the pmp market.

Haha, well, I don't visit the Microsoft boards all that frequently, so I don't know which horses are dead, or which are dancing. I just read the article on Marketwatch today, and figured I'd share it.

The article is stupid. Full of misinformation.

Usually when people make statements like that, they back it up with, you know, points, examples, or statements. Something.

lol No this horse ain't officially dead yet, far from it. The atmosphere here has been quite positive about Windows Phone 7 actually. I was just going to be funny and proclaim it dead pre-maturely since I've been thinking very negatively in the last week about the chances of Phone 7 and your article was kind of a nail in the coffin.

It's like I just saw a vision in front of me, 6 months from now an article like this but named "why Windows Phone 7 was doomed from the beginning".

So.... I can use this image?

It's a dancing horse!

lol yes if you're an optimistic fanboy.

Gotta love the dry tone of his comment though.

I thought Windows Phone 7 looked pretty interesting personally. They had some good ideas and much of their execution looks well done. If you gave the average smart phone user a WP7 phone and told them they HAD to use it, I don't think you'd get too many complaints.