Samsung, Apple, Microsoft and others plan heavy advertising campaigns this Christmas

Samsung, Apple and Microsoft will be among the smartphone and tablet manufacturers spending $5 billion this holiday season on advertising their devices. Starting this weekend, Microsoft will begin spending between $1.5 billion and $1.8 billion to promote Windows 8. Analyst Robert Enderle says that you don't see that kind of money spent on promotion outside of a Presidential election campaign.

While Microsoft is known for advertising on television, Google is more familiar with online ads as are other newer companies like Amazon. For those newer tech giants, advertising means banner ads and click-thrus. When someone like Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who once said that "advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product," starts doubling his advertising budget from $593 million to $1.4 billion last year, you know that there has been a major shift in the dynamics. Google, for its part, has tripled its ad spending to $1.4 billion last year. Throw in its wholly owned Motorola subsidiary and the ad budget at Mountain View reaches $2.1 billion. Apple too has seen its advertising spending double from 2009's $500 million to $933 million last year.

A perusal through the annual reports of the top eight tech advertisers, a group that includes Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Google and Apple reveals that combined the group spent $15 billion promoting themselves in the last fiscal year., Not all of that money went to advertise mobile products. Some of the $2.7 billion that Korean based Samsung has earmarked for ad spending promotes other products like television sets. A big piece of the $4.5 billion that Sony has budgeted for ads is spent to promote the group's latest motion pictures.

For some tech firms, advertising outlays are rising at a rate of 50% a year. With the push by carriers to advertise 4G services including in the UK where EE has debuted LTE, global ad dollars spent on promoting mobile products could reach $5 billion in the final month of the year according to Benedict Evans at the research firm Enders Analysis. And don't forget that as part of its deal to support Windows Phone, Finnish handset maker Nokia receives $250 million a quarter to support the platform.

Like an NFL better who counts on the Super Bowl to get even after a terrible regular season, those handset makers who had tough years up through the holiday season will  market their phones heavily looking to pick up some ground during the holidays. In the first half of 2012, 300 million Android models were sold compared to 110 million Apple iPhone models and just 10 million Windows Phone units.

This year's fourth quarter is chock full of amazing product launches both official and rumored. The list includes Windows Phone 8 handsets from Nokia, Samsung and HTC,  Windows 8 tablets, the Apple iPad mini, the LG Optimus G, and the LG Nexus 4 to name a few.

source: The GuardianUK