

Microsoft to pay more than half a billion to jump-start WP7 - lotusleaf1987
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/microsoft-half-billion-dollars-windows-phone-7/

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narrator
How much money have they lost on MSN?

[http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/ho...](http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/10/how_is_msn_losi.html)

Microsoft has $36 billion in cash. They could loose 1/2 billion on Windows
Phone 7 for 72 year and still not run out of cash.

That's why they could buy a company (Danger), have a ton of developers work
for quite a long time on Kin and then throw the whole project away and shrug
it off.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
Investors need sexy emerging new markets. They don't want to hear another
billion in "growth" sucked from the same ol' stones (Windows and Office) that
you've managed through boring OEM bundling deals. Zzzzz, wake me when Ballmer
throws something or sweats in a different way.

MS needs to take their Surfaces and Couriers out of the pipeline and onto the
shelves. If not, then they're trying to just compete with the other
conglomerates in tech, like IBM (who set aside $20B just for acquisitions) or
Cisco, the kings of war chests with ~$45B. Hell, even Google is catching up
with them, and they come out with new stuff every month. Granted, most of them
don't hit it big (or at all), but they're steady releasing betas, and
acquiring like Cisco used to back in the late 90s, early 00s.

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Natsu
Oh, There's a Windows Phone 7 now?

For a minute there, I thought the WordPerfect antitrust case had taken a
strange turn, given that WP7 shipped in 1996 or so.

