Steve Ballmer is a man facing an incredible uphill right now. He needs to prove that Microsoft’s latest attempt at penetrating the mobile market is actually going places. The partnership with Nokia will do plenty to help the world take notice of Windows Phone, but these days unless you’ve got a fancy ad campaign pushing your products in people’s face, you’re going nowhere. Microsoft knows this, and according to Mobile Magazine they’re going to pump $44 million into a pot that both Nokia and Samsung will both be feasting from for their UK Windows Phone marketing blitz. Nokia will get a majority of that cash, $31.5 million, while Samsung will get the remaining $12.5 million. Now one of Nokia’s ads already leaked, it’s for the Nokia 800. We can’t really say much about it since the complete story isn’t there for us to critique, but we just can’t help but think that the damage that Nokia has done to themselves (N97 anyone?) will be more of a challenge to rectify than proving that Windows Phone is shiny, new, easy to use, and worth your time.
When it comes to devices, we already know what Samsung is going to be pushing. They’ve got the Omnia W, which sports a 3.7 inch 800 × 480 pixel Super AMOLED display, 1.4GHz processor, VGA webcam on the front, 5 megapixel camera with 720p video recording on the back, and the same 14.4 Mbps theoretical maximum speed that Apple’s newest iPhone uses. As for Nokia, they’re due to hold an event in less than 10 days dubbed “Nokia World”. We predict that they’ll announce 3 devices there, one will have a massive 4.3 inch screen, the other 2 will have 3.7 inch screens, with 1 using AMOLED and the other using conventional LCD technology. The AMOLED varient will likely feature an 8 megapixel camera, the LCD variant will rock a 5 megapixel shooter.
This begs the question, are you are going to pick up a Windows Phone this holiday shopping season and if so then why?