back to article Nokia Ace to launch from $100m mountain of ad cash

Microsoft and its partners will start spending money like water in the next three months, following the launch of the Nokia Ace, according to sources cited by Betanews. The site says $100m in cash will be spent by AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia to push the Windows Phone handset into American hands in the second quarter of 2012. …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. AndyS
    Thumb Down

    Yay! Windows!

    Do I sense another "Get The Facts!!!" lies and smears campaign engulfing us? Yipee.

    1. Interlingua_TV

      Windows Phones prone to Windows viruses

      The biggest problem with Windows Phone 7 is the core of the OS is common with Windows and there are many reports around with Windows Phones virused. A virus can come into the phone as easy as a jpg image or any other email or attachment.

      While for Android and iOS this is not a problem, Windows Phones have big time trouble with viruses. Once infected by a virus, the phone can be a simple brick and AT&T or Microsoft or Nokia will not accept your phone back for a replacement. Once it is bricked it is hard to prove the cause was a virus. This is why people recommend good anti-viruses to buy for Windows Phones. Think spending another $50 for a good anti-virus that does the job. Then again new viruses come in. There are reports the anti-virus blocked with the firewall all the ports, then the 3G internet connection stopped, only Wi-Fi would work. There are guides to make the firewall to not block all the ports. Bluetooth connection is not affected.

      1. Arthur Kater :-D ☺

        Sorry, but your comment is totally rubbish.

        The core of the Windows Phone 7 is based on Windows CE and is totally different from the standard Windows core. Windows CE is one of the most stable operating systems around and is often used in embedded and industrial systems where stability and continuity has to be of the highest level possible.

        iOS and Android and Linux based and much more prone to virusses. Apple (over)protects their iPhone users by only allowing pre-scanned applications (thru the Appstore). Android doesn't have this rigorous pre-scanning mechanism with many infected phones as a result.

        see also:

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_phone_7

        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CE

      2. DocWilson
        FAIL

        Erm... what?

        Hi there,

        More details please - names of viruses, what are the AV packages available for WP7? A few links to the reports would be greatfully received. Unless you're spouting complete rubbish, in which case you need not respond.

  2. Tom Chiverton 1
    FAIL

    Too little, too late ? They might spend a fortune with a company, who will in return put it up-front, but if it sucks they'll still become luke warm to the idea of free money soon enough.

  3. Shaun 1

    It'll likely be my next phone

    As long as it comes to TMUK. It'll be a nice upgrade from my Omnia 7

  4. Jess

    features

    Do the new Nokias retain the SIP facility of the later Symbian phones?

    Will the Ace have a battery life to match Symbian phones?

    We already know that it won't run either either the huge number of old Win Mo wince apps (or the Symbian ones obviously)

    I would love to replace my BB with an N8, but certainly not a WinMO device.

    Looks like Android or remaining with BB are the sensible choices.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No SIP in WP7

      To be honest, if you have Symbian and want to upgrade your best best is a switch to Android, or alternatively MeeGo (N9) as this frankly awesome Nokia hardware/software combination includes all of the functionality you have come to expect from Symbian, plus a lot more - the N9 is Nokia through-and-through and the perfect upgrade for Symbian users (though Nokia have managed to effectively kill it, too).

      WP7.5 and the Lumia range, on the other hand, are a mish-mash of Nokia hardware (based on unfamiliar - for Nokia - Qualcomm hardware, which is missing many low-level features from Symbian such as no alarm when the device is off, no charging when device is off, no custom ringtones etc.) and restricted/incomplete Microsoft software.

      1. whiteafrican

        ...checks facts...

        "missing many low-level features from Symbian such as no alarm when the device is off, no charging when device is off, no custom ringtones etc."

        This is just untrue - the Lumia 800 alarms and charging both work just fine when the device is off.

        As for ringtones, there is a perfectly clear set of instructions as to how to set up a custom ringtone here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsphone/en-us/howto/wp7/start/create-ringtones.aspx

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          @whiteafrican: Just checked my Lumia 800, and my facts are correct (mostly)...

          Alarms: If you set an alarm, and the Lumia 800 is powered off, the alarm will NOT sound (just tested it again on my Lumia 800 and the alarm did not go off). The missed alarm did however sound the next time I powered on the device, but what good is that? This simply isn't the case with Symbian or Maemo/MeeGo, presumably because the Qualcomm based Lumia devices are missing the necessary hardware to perform this function (Retu and Thavo dedicated Nokia IC's come to mind), and/or Microsoft haven't gotten around to implementing this kind of functionality that we've all taken for granted on "legacy" Nokia platforms.

          Charging: If the device is powered off, the device has to boot fully into WP7.5 in order to charge, which means background data services become fully active (unless you stick the device into Flight mode), potentially chewing through cellular data (if you're not on WiFi). All this just to charge the device. With Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo, the device remains in a not-quite-on state to facilitate charging but without booting the entire OS (again, thanks to dedicated Nokia custom ICs).

          Ringtones: Wow, that is a rather cackhanded approach (but thanks for the info) - wouldn't it just be easier to choose a rigntone from the available tracks on the device rather than that workaround? I have so far avoided installing the Zune bloatware, as I have no real plans to use the Lumia 800 for anything serious.

          It's also a shame mass storage device mode isn't supported without first having to install the Windows-only Zune drivers (then hack on the Windows registry to actually enable the disabled-by-default mass storage device functionality), which incidentally also means a WP7 device is completely useless for Linux users (maybe no surprise). Something else that Nokia users are not used to (ie. the lack of mass storage support).

  5. tirk
    FAIL

    $100m?

    No, I'd need more than that to use a Fisher-Price OS that won't even securely sync with Outlook, unless you have Exchange.

    1. Fuzz
      WTF?

      why?

      Two questions.

      1. Why would you want to sync your phone directly with outlook? Surely you sync your phone with whichever service provider outlook is getting your emails from.

      2. Why would you use Outlook if you didn't have an exchange server?

      1. elsonroa

        Outlook is not just for Email.

        Outlook is probably the most widely used contact management and calendar application out there, even for individuals and small businesses which can't justify running Exchange. For many people, being able to keep your phone and PC contacts and calendar in sync is a more useful feature than any amount of tweetbookery crap.

      2. multipharious

        @Fuzz

        What the hell do you use, 10 different webmail logins?

        Initially the WinPhone contact migration pissed me off royally, but once complete (and now that HTTPS is available for the Outlook Hotmail Connector) I now have an Exchange server and all Contact/Calendar synchronization is handled over the air. My laptop, work machine, netbook, and home machine are all synchronized. One entry or update anywhere and it is done. Yes, Hotmail is run on Exchange.

        Outlook is the way I prefer to use email, and I pay a fair amount of licensing for my home and office usage. The forced migration to Microsoft's Cloud Service strategy really made me upset, and I would prefer that my primary version be local. It isn't and that causes issues for me to keep Android and iOS devices synchronized. I still need to take the time and solve this, since right now it is manual and tedious. If the WP7 device did things the "normal" old skool way then it would be simple.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'd spend that $100million on ...

    getting free phones and dev tools into the hands of developers. It would at least give Steve Ballmer an excuse to retread his dance routine

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Already happening

      Nokia are already giving away 25,000 Lumia 800's to developers. In addition, they (Nokia and/or Microsoft) are also giving away tens of thousands more to anyone willing to give "feedback" during a six month perod (just use it once or twice a week) and anyone claiming to have a virus on their Android handset. I've read there will be 75,000 giveaways in total, so that must mean 50,000 for feedback and viruses.

      I've got a free Lumia 800 sitting here from the Nokia developer device program, I've played with it now for a week but come to the conclusion it's not got a hope in hell of replacing my MeeGo-Harmattan based Nokia N950. The UI design and stock functionality of the latter knocks it into a cocked hat (but then I don't own an Xbox 360, nor am I interested in updating Excel spreadsheets on a 3.7" screen with no keyboard).

      Anon, obviously.

  7. Mikel
    Happy

    Money on fire

    Launch ad budget for Windows Phone 7 was reportedly half a billion dollars. It didn't move the needle - and that was before we had quad-core phones. They may as well set the money on fire.

  8. crayon

    On their current trajectory, Nokia would most likely be gone before they finish spending that $100m.

  9. Pie

    Like Shaun, I have an Omnia 7 and will certainly look at this one for my next upgrade. The OS works well for me, the only thing I don't like is it doesn't thread calls in your call history, but I haven't applied the latest update yet so maybe that adds it.

    1. Jim Coleman
      Thumb Up

      @Pie: No call threading in the call history, but if you look at a contact in the People hub, you get a fully threaded history of all calls, emails, texts and messages via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Windows Live.

      1. Pie

        Thanks Jim, I'll look at that, forgot phone at home today.

  10. Doug 3
    FAIL

    we won't see or hear about its hardware

    because Windows Phone 7 does not support the current generation of phone hardware( dual core CPU and 1GB+ RAM ). They will have to do "branding" style of marketing or market Windows phone. so this should lead to some rather poor ads but maybe some funny/haha ones too.

    1. Jim Coleman
      Thumb Down

      @Doug 3:

      Just because other mobile OSs need dual core and tons of RAM, doesn't mean WP7 does. Does that mean other OSs are bloatware? Possibly.

      1. Richard 12 Silver badge
        FAIL

        Dual core lets you do a lot of clever things

        You can have two "slow" cores instead of one really fast one, with the same total MIPs, and still have a more responsive phone by reducing task switching overhead. This may also use less power while being faster!

        You can turn one core off entirely when you don't need it - This saves much more power than slowing down a single core, because there's a lower limit to the clock speed you can go and still have the phone handle basic tasks. Like GSM.

        Or even better, that big.LITTLE idea - fast core for high-performance stuff, slow core for small stuff, and turn off the fast core when you don't need it - saving a lot more power than slowing down the cores.

        More RAM makes no difference to the OS in either case, but does mean you can run more memory-intensive applications - eg spreadsheets and PDFs can eat RAM for breakfast.

  11. tmTM

    About Time?

    There's barely been a peep about Nokia and WinMo in mainstream media.

    If it wasn't for tech news sites covering every mistake Nokia have made recently I doubt anyone would know about their new phones.

  12. Doug 3

    side topic: US market - seems a number of Android devices missing US market

    Anyone notice these marketing dollars are for the US market? What could also be tied in with some of Microsoft's money is how we see a number of Android devices getting released outside of the US market with no mention of any release into the US market.

    As we've seen many times before, Microsoft marketing deals often are tied in with exclusionary elements regarding competing products. This goes back as far as the DOS and OS/2 days and hasn't stopped.

  13. Grubby

    100m...

    Why don't they just pay one of their developers to leave it in a bar and have 'revealing pics' of it splashed all over the world.

    1. Lars Silver badge
      Pint

      @Grubby

      Why, because they would be sued bye Apple.

  14. Doug 3

    release in March 2012. When will the Windows Phone 8 ads begin?

    Microsoft is all into Windows 8 these days and their "leaked" Windows Phone road map talked about a superphone in late 2012. Can we really believe that the WindowsCE based Windows Phone 7 is capable of being a "superphone" and with the timing of Windows 8( for ARM too ) I wonder if Nokia can survive this mess. Microsoft is still pushing a crusty OS layer on WP7 and while Nokia is spending on ads for that, Microsoft will be singing the praises of Windows 8. And that'll include Windows 8 on ARM tablets and netbooks too. With iPhone OS(iOS) and Android runnign on smartphones, tablets and netbooks how can anyone miss the connection between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8?

    Nokia is doubly screwed here. So it goes, they have made the bed and must now lie in it.

    1. Keep Refrigerated
      Holmes

      that's the trouble with numbers...

      It's going to be interesting how they compete against Android and iOS, which have both scaled up from a cell phone model to tablet model, whereas MS are scaling down from the desktop model to tablet model.

      I'm sure MS are not above the usual dirty tricks but consumers have been conditioned for 3-4 years now that upgrades on phones are (or should be) regular and free, by extension the tablet OS (based as it is on the phone OS) is also updated regularly and free. They at least understand Android updates are free from Google even if their particular vendor/operator tag team are not pushing them.

      So MS enters this sophisticated culture with an OS they expect people to pay for every upgrade, but only upgrade once very 2-4 years or 1 year for a Service Pack. The only way I see them doing this is to start giving their patches code-names, but even then they're going to run into that great big version elephant in the room - why would people wait a long time then pay for Windows 9 when Android is giving away the latest version every few months (or year for iOS)?

      Can MS bring the sheep back into the fold and teach them to pay for upgrades? It's possible I guess, if you have the wisdom of St Jobs and ability to cultivate religious devotion. However I think mainstream consumers are starting to see the man behind the curtain, they're realising that an OS doesn't require a big huge release, big huge marketing hype and a big huge price in order to bring the latest and greatest.

      Instead there's less excitement these days over what the next version of Windows will include because the exciting new tech is in their pocket and/or their bag. They're getting used to the fact that Windows is limited, behind the times, less relevant and out of date even before it's next release.

      1. John 62

        OS updates

        Actually MS has been known to provide quite a bit of functionality through service packs and they know that most people don't upgrade their OS, they buy a new PC. They know that if they get in on the fondleslab action for reals, it'll be the same, but if they don't get in, they can't expect the license revenue (or marketplace revenue - though their Azure push means they can offer cloud services to people pushing android/ios frontends)

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like