AT&T has already said that it will be promoting the launch of the just released Nokia Lumia 900 quite a bit more than their normal smartphone product launches. Now a new report on Ad Age gives a specific number, claiming that AT&T will spend over $150 million to help sell the Lumia 900 to its customers.
That"s a lot of ad money for one smartphone. The story says that AT&T spend $3 billion for its entire 2010 ad budget. Officially, AT&T has not confirmed the report.
One possible reason for such a huge marketing budget for the Lumia 900 is the fact that AT&T is losing subscribers to Verizon. AT&T lost its exclusive iPhone contract to Verizon in early 2011 and since then is getting close to losing its lead in terms of smartphone subscribers.
The article claims that in the year since Verizon added the iPhone, it saw a gain of 81 percent of smartphone subscribers, for a total of 32.2 million. By contrast AT&T still has 33.8 million smartphone subscribers but its rate of growth in the past year was only 37 percent.
AT&T most likely sees the Lumia 900 as a way to make itself look different than Verizon and Sprint, which also sells the iPhone now. Only time will tell if this effort will succeed.