A report surfaced yesterday that Microsoft was ready to spend billions to woo manufacturers back to the Windows Phone platform. Frank X. Shaw, the company’s chief of corporate communications today dismissed these reports of Windows Phone payments via Twitter, calling the US$2.6 billion figure “complete fiction.”
reality check. Do we do co-marketing with partners? You bet! But these numbers are complete fiction! http://t.co/Hfq7dtk9u1
— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 16, 2014
Shaw did confirm that Microsoft would help partners with co-promotions. Such a practice where companies share marketing and promotion costs is not unusual. Microsoft and other companies have certainly used it in the past. Essentially, he does not deny that Microsoft could pay partners to entice them to make Windows Phone devices but contests the amounts mentioned and the way the money would be spent.
Eldar Murtazin, who first reported these numbers, still sees it differently. He claims that Microsoft will effectively pay for “all R&D” costs to help manufacturers get new Windows Phone devices to market.
@UVStaska they could call this money ad they wish 🙂 but thats not marketing – they paying for all r&d costs, etc
— Eldar Murtazin (@eldarmurtazin) January 16, 2014
To Murtazin’s point, a precedent for this already exists. Microsoft paid Nokia billions to support its Windows Phone efforts.
In the end, it appears that Microsoft is ready and willing to open the purse strings to help Windows Phone build up its market share by being offered on a range of devices from different manufacturers. However the money is spent (license fee subsidization, R&D costs, marketing, co-promotions etc., it will be spent. Whether such a Windows Phone payments strategy can work against the Android-iOS juggernaut still remains to be seen.
Source : BGR