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Microsoft Pays $44 Million To Samsung and Nokia For Mango Marketing
CSHARP123 writes "Ballmer opened up the company's coffers to Nokia and Samsung for a holiday blitz of Mango marketing. Hold onto your hats though, it's no carte blanche access to Redmond's Gringotts. According to a report on Mobile Magazine, inside sources claim MS has set aside £28 million (about $44 million) for the endeavor, with about £20 million of that reserved for Nokia's first Windows Phone 7.5 handset. This joint marketing effort is reportedly a broader extension of the cooperative agreements all parties agreed to, ensuring future WP devices get the media saturation they deserve. Samsung is also due to unveil a major Christmas ad push for the Omnia W with an estimated £8m spend. Maybe this is what Samsung gets for making a deal on patents to cover Android OS? Not a bad deal for Samsung."
Shoulda spent 50 million apparently.
Holy hell, this submission isn't in any normal dialect of English. I, too, had no idea what the hell a "Mango" is. But what's this "Gringotts" crap? And what's an "Omnia W"?
That's like a spam come true!
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Step 1. Collect patent royalties from every Android device that Samsung sells
Step 2. Turn around and give that money back to Samsung to push Windows Phone 7
Step 3. ???
Step 4. Profit
If you want your hottest new phone OS to seem like a half-measure, make sure it labelled 0.5 behind than your current OS.
They should give a million to each developer to actually pay any attention to their wonderful barred system. Do they finally support native languages or Java there? Anybody?
For a man who is supposedly straight, you sure do think about dicks a lot.
So basically they milk money from Samsung for using Android but then bribe them into pushing WP7 by giving some of that money back? Would not make sense to at least tell them they don't have to pay the fee if they promote WP7 or is it that MS realises WP7 is going to tank and still wants that Android money.
I think of Mango on SNL
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Except for being effectively exclusive to Microsoft platforms. Mono is barely compatible with .NET, definitely not enough that you can take a binary targeting .NET 3.5 and run it on Linux (which is exactly how Microsoft wanted Java.)
"barred "
have you used it and been to their marketplace or are you just talking out your ass
Explain how it is different from Apple's walled garden?
Oh I know about Chevron WP7, it just legitimizes the jail.
I was setting up an Internet/Wi-Fi router for a friend this weekend to replace an old flaky DLINK, and I set it up with a hidden SSID as well as a moderately secure WAP2 PSK. Then I reconnected all their devices to the new setup WiFi access point (laptops, iPod, BlackBerry, my Android phone). All except for the phone running Microsoft Windows Phone 7, because apparently there is no way to specify an unadvertised SSID in WP7. Not even if you turn on advertising the SSID, connect the phone, a disable SSID advertising again. That might not be an issue for some people who don't run unadvertised Wifi at home or work, but I wouldn't want to invest in software that encourages less secure configurations.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
There are plenty of .Net binaries that run cross platform... Mainly those designed with portability in mind... I suppose you could list the number of gtk+ or qt based apps that are magically cross platform? Cross platform support for a complex application isn't always a simple thing... And in Java dependencies on on native libraries is even harder to support cross platform than with .Net.
That aside... I don't trust MS to keep supporting their phone platform infrastructure yet. It's outside their core structure, and MS has a history of dropping edge case support.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
I'm going to buy a Samsung Android phone this Christmas (Nexus Prime)
And to achieve this cross platform capability, how much did they have to give up in the Microsoft .NET libraries? Mono will forever be chasing .NET.
Which, obviously, defeats the purpose of Java.
Something tells me they're going to do with this that they did with the xbox: burn money until it takes hold. MS absolutely doesn't want to be pushed completely out of the smartphone space, which is a primary driver for them attacking Android.
Exclusive to Microsoft, which given the fact that we're talking about software to run ONLY ON WINDOWS PHONE hardware, doesn't seem like such an unreasonable thing does it?
I heard the gingers are trying to recruit as well. They are using slideshows, children's books and red-head radio talk shows to try and convince us they aren't evil. I thought my will was strong, but the other day I hesitated in front of a bottle of red hair dye in the supermarket.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I just love being able to run iOS applications on my Android phone. Oh, wait, I can't.
They talk about the .NET APIs etc. and want to see it succeed to help ensure their skills stay relevant. That's the same reason why millions of Java developers push Android and BlackBerry, and will continue to do so. At JavaOne 2011 Oracle showed Java FX 2.0 running on a Windows tablet, so Java is/will be covered there too.
> Something tells me they're going to do with this that they did with the xbox: burn money until it takes hold. MS absolutely doesn't want to be pushed completely out of the smartphone space, which is a primary driver for them attacking Android.
If Microsoft had any faith in their ability to make great products, they would have been one of the first to jump on Android and made a must-have Android phone that kicks the iPhones arse. It would have included all kinds of proprietary Microsoft secret sauce that made it integrate seamlessly with Windows desktops, which like it or not 90% of us have.
Many of us would have given it a chance because we wanted something that worked well with our desktops.
But instead Microsoft revealed their deepest fear that they cannot make a decent product and cannot compete on a level playing field against more creative companies. They invented their own and are trying to win by making deals with other companies to spread fear and doubt about patents and lawsuits.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
Do they finally support native languages or Java there? Anybody?
Native code is not supported.
It might be possible to get Java to run with IKVM, I don't know. In terms of features, CLR is a strict superset of JVM, so it's always possible to convert Java bytecode to CIL; the question is the libraries. I don't think anybody tried though - why would they?
Microsoft never could have done this, as they have set themselves up as an insular platform vendor that not use outside technologies unless forced to. They absolutely would not release something with their name on it that ran something developed by Google, much less Linux.
Rather, they have placed a new UI on the Windows CE core and added all the proprietary goop you asked for. MS is doing exactly what you suggested, but doubling down on the FUD to try and drive other vendors off the platform of a competitor and on to theirs.
No, you tool. I was countering the point about .NET and Java. Things locked to one vendors platforms are hardly "superior."
Microsoft spends O(billions) on advertising. $44M on a single product that needs help with traction sounds kind of light, actually.
.NET is almost like Java, but significantly better.
Huh?
That's the dumbest post I've ever read. Java and C# are practically interchangeable. You know one, you know the other.
Windows Phone 7 is a complete rewrite and shares little to no code with Windows CE.
There were concerts, ads, product placements on popular TV shows, purchased "Likes" on Facebook and followers on Twitter - and of course astroturfers to beat all previous levels of astroturfing, including here in these comments by folk who've done no else but astoturf by their comment record. Ad placements on all prominent online venues ensured adoring reviews on those same sites. At best estimate they moved 2M phones, so the cost of marketing is more than the build cost of the equipment - which is not that odd in general but pretty weird in phones at this level. They'd have done better to buy some phones in bulk and give them away to likely influencers. They've not got great ROI for a company whose legions bear Return On Investment as a standard to sell their ware.
The money to Samsung is probably balanced against the patent licensing agreement so Samsung will continue to build new phones noone will buy. Nokia? Well, that's probably part of the $1B already well commented on. And they're not going to turn down any deal because they have the Manchurian CEO.
So now the news is they're stepping it down by 80% and hoping to do more with less. Good luck with that.
WP phones are single core at best. They have limited choice and old tech. At any one retail vendor there will be 0-2 Windows phones up against 0-5 iPhones and 19-30 Android phones. As soon as the customer says "what if..." the salesman is compelled to find the best fit, and the greater selection leads to better fits. Call it fragmentation if you want to. It works.
Nokia built their business on providing many slightly different options to fill the vendor's shelf, pushing out competing options from the shelf. Android vendors have learned from this, and are now out-competing Nokia for shelf space. If you want customers to buy it, it helps if they can fondle it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
But I think the whole Nokia+MS partnership was great idea for two companies that weren't doing good, both in the different areas of the industry. They basically combined their good sides to let go off their bad sides.
I've been saying the same thing - it's not popular or well-understood here, but if you think long term Microsoft stands a very good chance to make a comeback in a way it would not have without Nokia. Nokia + MS is as close as MS can get to Apple-level tailored hardware for WP7.
And that growth will come mostly at the expense of Android, so it will be a very interesting year ahead...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Very much wrong. Even wikipedia lists it in the Windows CE family because as the GP stated... it is a fancy new UI and API set. You can even link against the older Windows CE libraries and they will run on the phone. Good luck getting it in the Marketplace though.
That is the dumbest comment I've ever read. Sure C# syntax is similar to Java syntax, but not the rest of the platform. Language syntax is such a tiny piece.
That M$ is giving Samsung money for what seems like nothing likely has more to do with them charging Samsung to use Android ie a quick 'mea culpa' and please don't do to use what you are going to do to Apple.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Since when was Meego a Microsoft product? Last time I checked Nokia N9 is the first, and probably, one of the last Meego handsets.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
OFFS what is it about fruit? Mangos, Apples, Lemons...
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Let me fix that last paragraph for you:
But instead, Microsoft realized they could do better than the "me-too" Google phones. Instead of coming up with another boring cluttered smart-phone to compete with everyone re-packaging Android, they hunkered down and proved themselves the more creative company. They came up with a clean new interface and worked tirelessly on building a solid base platform which could easily go head-to-head with anything available. They are trying to win by helping with advertising costs for their manufacturers, just as Google most assuredly does.
Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft, though I am nowhere near the Windows Phone nor the marketing departments. I have no special non-public knowledge of the goings-on in either department. I am however a proud owner of a Mango phone (HTC Arrive on Sprint). For anyone who hasn't used Mango, it's an incredibly stable feature-rich platform which deserves a look.
Disclaimer: I do work for Microsoft
Yeah, we can tell.
-- Linux user #369862
"Windows Phone 7 is a complete rewrite and shares little to no code with Windows CE."
total utter otterific bullshit. shares little in the regard of what's accessible to devs of course... but the funny thing is that wp7 could've been released as an _app_ for wm6.5.
yep but .net devs are dumb. a qt and whatever dev can jump to it in few weeks. but if you have the silverlight is everything mindset.. then you can't jump anywhere.
the post is truthful.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Guys finally when you get to doing the "Will it blend?" test on Mango, please use some yogurt too, and make a Mango Lassi.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
For anyone who hasn't used Mango, it's an incredibly stable feature-rich platform which deserves a look.
I have an HD7. It is a piece of shit and sits in my drawer at home. My Samsung Vibrant with Cyanogenmod walks all over it in functionality as well as aesthetics. Wake me up when Windows Phone Vista supports ad-hoc networking so I don't have to put my sim in it everytime I want to use that piece of shit. Also, nudge me when it supports text reflow when I zoom in with the browser. What a piece of trash.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
According to this Microsoft already spent $500million marketing WP7:
http://www.engadget.com/2010/10/18/microsoft-to-spend-one-billion-dollars-advertising-kinect-and-wi/
I fail to see how an extra $44million is going to make a big difference.
They launched with 11 WP7 handsets so I doubt the problem was that customers couldn't find hardware they liked. More likely it's that most customers think the user interface is an abomination. How do Microsoft respond the the market's clear dislike of the metro interface? They put it in the next version of desktop Windows! That's typical of Microsoft; they're never looking to see what customers want they want but instead they decide what they want to sell and try and force it on the customers through their monopoly.
Wait, Microsoft named a phone OS "Mango"? Is it going to come with "Like the deserts miss the rain" as a ringtone?
1. Not broadcasting SSID is a false sense of security. Anyone sniffing will see your SSID since it's not encrypted.
Or you do not need to do that.
2. WP7.5 allows you to specify a SSID
A company that has been making smartphones with wifi longer than Apple, RIM, and Google put that feature in their latest update!
Mango doesn't seem bad but really Microsoft you have no excuse for not being the best out of the gate as this time. You are the worlds largest software company and have been in this market for a long time. To be playing catch up is just inexcusable.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Widespread depictions of Chris Kattan in gold Lamé hot pants, slapping his gluteus.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Wake me up when Windows Phone Vista supports ad-hoc networking so I don't have to put my sim in it everytime I want to use that piece of shit.
So it's a 'piece of shit' because it doesn't support adhoc networking? I suppose if you're that religiously tied to Android you'll ignore its myriad of faults and still throw anything else to the trash heap unless they are perfect in every way.
Also, nudge me when it supports text reflow when I zoom in with the browser. What a piece of trash.
That's not the OS, same as lack of reflow in safari is not a fault of iOS. And the same as the fact that the Android browser's horrible implementation of text reflow that clips inline images and doesn't resize them is not the fault of Android itself.
So, Mr. "I've been registered with the Linux Counter for 14 months, I'm so l33t"... I know it's made by the company everyone loves to hate, but have you actually tried out a Mango phone?
-- Linux user # 292874 (Believe it or not, it's possible for someone to like and use more than one OS.)
Shut the fuck up, whiney bitch.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
So it's a 'piece of shit' because it doesn't support adhoc networking?
That's one reason. Another reason is the constant need to orientate it between horizontal and vertical to enter in a url. Also, the shit performance of third party app scrolling. And on and on.
That's not the OS,
No, it's the browser that comes with the OS. Which is a piece of shit.
And the same as the fact that the Android browser's horrible implementation of text reflow that clips inline images and doesn't resize them is not the fault of Android itself.
So, Android reflows and IE on wp7 doesn't. Thank you for verifying how shit your precious is.
The soylentnews experiment has been a dismal failure.
I didn't update my account for some time and it got deleted or I changed my email, I can't remember. I've used Slackware for a number of years before. Nice try though. Fucktard. If you hadn't used the same bullshit Apple spews when they talk about their shit, I might get interested, but that pile of pure bullshit you wrote up is just stupid. I've also never claimed to be "leet" so why don't you stick your fucking strawman arguments up your whiny bitch ass?
-- Linux user #369862