Microsoft and Nokia have been pretty busy pushing the Windows Phone. With AT&T coming into the picture, the game was quite clear – Lumia 900 was to be AT&T’s new flagship.
We all know that a flagship is something which the carrier/store pushes with all it’s might. But this is not the case with AT&T. As an article points out on CNET, who conducted a secret shopper survey of 5 AT&T stores in Manhattan. They did not find the Nokia Lumia 900 high on the list of recommended handsets. Here is what happened
…But when I asked for advice on buying a new smartphone, sales associates in five different stores in Manhattan actually recommended the Apple iPhone and not the carrier’s latest "hero" device.
Even when I prompted them to tell me more about the Lumia 900, none was willing to recommend it to me for purchase.
"Windows Phone is alright," said an associate in a store on the Upper West Side. "But it’s no iPhone."
This became clear to me when I walked into the AT&T stores and told each associate I encountered that I had never owned a smartphone but was looking to buy my first one. I explained I didn’t have any preconceived ideas about which device I wanted to buy. I told them I was a PC user, who knew little about cell phones and was looking for something easy to use. My main objective for owning a smartphone was to access email, surf the Web and check Facebook.
While all these activities could be easily achieved with a Windows Phone, associate after associate first pushed me to toward an iPhone and then suggested an Android device as my second option.
"For your first smartphone, you should get an iPhone," an assistant manager at an AT&T store told me. "When you get bored with that, you should try an Android phone."
When I asked him about the Lumia 900 and the Windows Phone OS for someone such as myself who had never had a smartphone, he told me he thought it was too complicated. He admitted he hadn’t used the Lumia 900 much. He had only gotten the device a couple of days before the launch on Sunday.
No wonder we will see competition on the east coast between Android and iPhone only.
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