MSFT Spending Half a Billion on Advertising for Windows 8

By Douglas Perry
published

Attendees at a Microsoft company meeting in Germany have apparently leaked a presentation to WinFuture.de and revealed that Microsoft will be supporting the launch of Windows 8 with $500 million for advertising and marketing.

The number was not officially mentioned, but the company noted that its marketing budget would be 167 percent of the budget that was made available for Windows 7 - which was about $300 million. Additionally, the presentation also confirmed that Windows 8 is nearly completed and is scheduled to be released to manufacturing by the end of this month.

Microsoft officially announced today that the OS will hit RTM in the first week of August. However, if Microsoft sticks to the schedule outlined in the information given to WinFuture.de, we might be seeing Windows 8 RTM announced almost exactly three years after Windows 7 RTM, which Microsoft announced on July 22, 2009.

Douglas Perry
90 Comments Comment from the forums
  • math1337
    500 million dollars wasted...
    Reply
  • classzero
    They're going to need more than that!
    Reply
  • drwho1
    math1337500 million dollars wasted...
    Exactly, that's money down the drain.
    Windows 8 will be the biggest OS flop in history, bigger flop than Vista and Windows Me combined.
    Reply
  • drwho1
    classzeroThey're going to need more than that!There is no amount of money that will get them out this flop.
    Reply
  • DroKing
    *yawns* I will just buy win 7 the day win 8 come out to show them how dumb win 8 is.
    Reply
  • itchyisvegeta
    And this is why Forbs put Steve Balmer as the no 1 worst CEO right now.
    Reply
  • killerb255
    drwho1Exactly, that's money down the drain. Windows 8 will be the biggest OS flop in history, bigger flop than Vista and Windows Me combined.
    How so?

    Remember that there were a lot of things that made Vista a flop:
    1) Underpowered hardware (less than 2 GB of RAM for Vista RTM was bad news, and most PCs didn't have that back then)
    2) Repeated delays
    3) Developers dragging their feet with Vista-compatible drivers
    4) User Account Control being too strict
    5) Six years of complacency (XP came out in 2001, Vista came out in 2007).
    6) Major program compatibility issues at the time
    7) XP was "good enough."

    Out of all those things, only #7 would qualify for what would make Windows 8 a "flop." After all, Windows 8 is NT 6.2...not that big of a chance from Windows 7 being NT 6.1 (remember, XP was NT 5.1 and Vista was NT 6.0).
    Reply
  • everlast66
    This is the beginning of the END.
    MS is gradually turning into one of these slow and heavy dinosaurs that find it increasingly difficult to compete in dynamic industries like IT. They'll find themselves progressively outsold in the consumer sector, people no longer need a dedicated home PC to surf the internet, shop, communicate, do their banking and gaming.

    Their basic market, computer operating systems, that just couple of years back they ruled unchallenged, has now been split into several sectors, leisure time devices - tablets, TV/movie devices, smartphones, gaming consoles and office computers / workstations. In all, but the last, of these sectors they are being vastly outsold and are finding it hard to compete. They will need to invest more and more and reduce their market share. At the rate at which such companies are spending it takes only one wrong step and they might not be able to walk again. For Nokia it was 8bil in R&D spending, let's see it this is the wrong step for MS?
    Reply
  • iceman1992
    killerb255How so?Remember that there were a lot of things that made Vista a flop:1) Underpowered hardware (less than 2 GB of RAM for Vista RTM was bad news, and most PCs didn't have that back then)2) Repeated delays3) Developers dragging their feet with Vista-compatible drivers4) User Account Control being too strict5) Six years of complacency (XP came out in 2001, Vista came out in 2007).6) Major program compatibility issues at the time7) XP was "good enough."Out of all those things, only #7 would qualify for what would make Windows 8 a "flop." After all, Windows 8 is NT 6.2...not that big of a chance from Windows 7 being NT 6.1 (remember, XP was NT 5.1 and Vista was NT 6.0).Well for Win8,
    1) 7 is "good enough."
    2) Metro
    And #2 is the problem
    Reply
  • spartanmk2
    XP was a great OS and I would still be using it if it wasnt so dated, getting used to Win7 and no need to put a tablet OS on my desktop.
    Reply