When it comes to news about Microsoft, there’s really only two names I trust: Mary-Jo Foley from All About Microsoft and Paul Thurrott from the SuperSite for Windows. Now Paul’s been doing a weekly podcast with Leo Laporte from the TWiT.tv network for what feels like ages called Windows Weekly, and sometime last year Mary-Jo Foley started making regular guest appearances. The feedback from fans of the heavily Microsoft focused podcast was deafening, and Leo invited Mary-Jo to play a permanent role in the show. With that back history in mind, I’d like to point your attention to the latest episode of Windows Weekly, number 234. In it Mary-Jo states that both her and Paul have been hearing from their sources that the recently announced Nokia Lumia 900 will be hitting AT&T on March 18th. That would mean a lag time of over two months between product unveiling and product availability, which is frankly better than Nokia’s previous track record, but appalling in terms of how quickly the market moves.
Know what’s going to happen over the next 60 days? Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where they’ll be more phones announced than the amount of sexual partners that the cast of Jersey Shore have ever had, combined, plus the iPad 3 announcement. And let’s not forget that Microsoft will likely announce Windows Phone Tango at MWC, the next version of the operating system, so people are going to look at the Lumia 900 and call it old hat. Yes, the Lumia 900 will get a software update, much like every other Windows Phone will, but will that be how the masses perceive the situation?
Anyway, we still don’t know how AT&T will price the Lumia 900, and that’s obviously key to whether or not it’ll take off. How much can you realistically charge for a 1.4 GHz single core device with an 8 megapixel camera and a 4.3 inch screen?