Windows Phone 7 promotion would cost Microsoft half-a-billion

In today’s world marketing has great importance for business. It is marketing that makes or breaks product and this is why Microsoft is making sure that its new Windows Phone 7 get necessary amount of media exposure. It is reported that the software giant is going to spend more than $400 million in marketing for its Windows Phone 7.

However, this has not been disclosed by Microsoft but Jonathan Goldberg, analyst, Deutsche Bank telecommunications analyst made this prediction. For Windows Phone 7 Microsoft’s total expense would exceed $1 billion including development. Another unnamed source also said that MS would spend $500 million in marketing.

True, this is a huge budget but Microsoft has a long history of spending such large amount in marketing. Windows XP, which was launched in 2001, saw a whopping billion dollar advertising budget of which half-billion is spent by Intel and Microsoft and another half-billion by PC makers and retailers. Then Microsoft spent another half-billion in marketing while launching Xbox. In 2007, the company spent another half-billion dollar as per the reports of USA Today and AdvertisingAge for Windows Vista which failed miserably. In June 2009, Microsoft spent another $180 million for its overhauled search engine Bing. For Office 2010, the company spent $80 million of which, 70 percent had been spent online.

This time Microsoft is very serious for its early mobile OS did not gain much popularity among smartphone makers. The company even abandoned its earlier smartphone OS and focused wholly on the Windows Phone 7 which reveals its desperate attempt.