I had to laugh when I read this subject line over at Betanews.

Windows Phone partners bet $100M on Nokia Ace

Why laugh? It is because it was so reminiscent of this rumor floated on TechCrunch in August 2010 shortly before Windows Phone launched.

Microsoft To Pay More Than Half A Billion Dollars To Jump-Start Windows Phone 7

So, what ever happened to this rumored half-billion dollar campaign? Not much as far as I can tell. We saw a couple of laughable un-smartphone commercials and not much else.

If you wonder what a $100M marketing campaign looks like, reflect back at what Verizon and Motorola did back in the fall of 2009. It consisted of a series of big budget movie quality alien landing themed TV commercials, paper advertisements everywhere and in-store promotions that left such an impression that many people refer to any Android phone as a “Droid” even today.