Rumor: Nokia Lumia 900 to hit other U.S. operators in Q3 with an updated 12 MP camera

Last week Nokia announced the Windows Phone Mango running Lumia 900 at CES. It’s the company’s first 4G LTE phone and the phone that they hope will make Americans take Nokia seriously again. AT&T will be the first to offer the device, with the rumored launch date being March 18th, but what about the other operators? According to Paul Thurrott’s SuperSite for Windows AT&T’s contract with Nokia gives them a 45 day exclusivity window. Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon are supposedly considering offering the Lumia 900 at some point in Q3 of this year. It’s not going to be the same Lumia 900 that AT&T is getting however, this updated model will pack a 12 megapixel camera. Now of course this is all just speculation at this point, but Paul’s usually right on the money with these things, that and it just makes sense since Nokia has said that they want to get their devices on every operator’s network.

The bigger question is do Americans even want Windows Phone? If they do, why would they want a device that’s already going to be considered old hat by the time Q3 rolls around? You have to remember that Mobile World Congress is roughly six weeks away, and there’s going to be more phones announced at that show than you can shake a stick at. Then there’s CTIA, which has traditionally taken place in March, but this year it’s happening in May. One month after that there’s Google I/O and Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference. All that is happening before the end of June, which is also known as the end of Q2. Do you honestly think that people are going to even remember what the Lumia 900 is in Q3?

We’ve yet to see Microsoft’s alleged $200 million ad campaign for Windows Phone, maybe that will give them some attention, but it’s way too early to say that.