Yes, you read that right, Microsoft will invest no less than $500 million to promote the new Windows Phone 7 operating system. At least that way spun some analysts who see those from Microsoft a little desperate to remain competitive in a smartphone market where they have lost a lot of ground in recent years. In addition to the promotion costs, it seems that Microsoft will spend another half a billion dollars to continue developing the operating system and a fairly large number of applications for it. And to make the picture complete, several hundred million dollars will be spent in the form of discounts offered to resellers who sell the terminals in their own stores.
By comparison, Apple spent $500 million last year to promote all its products, and Microsoft would spend $1 billion to promote Windows Phone 7 by the end of this year. Microsoft will spend absolutely impressive sums to make Windows 7 known to the world and I for one hope that this whole plan will be successful because, let's be serious, the competition is good and it "urges" the manufacturers to offer as much as possible to the users.
