AT&T President: Nokia Lumia 900 Sales Exceeding Expectations

The massive Lumia 900 marketing effort appears to be paying off for AT&T, Microsoft and Nokia. The new Windows Phone is currently the best selling smartphone at Amazon.com, and some AT&T stores are already sold out.

A Wall Street Journal article calls out Nokia’s challenges and declining stock price , but has a glimmer of hope. Paul Roth, AT&T’s president of retail sales and service, said Lumia 900 has “exceeded” the carriers expectation in terms of sales. Roth didn’t provide any sales figures, but noted several stores sold out of the device. Of course, selling out doesn’t mean much since we don’t know how many phones these stores had in stock to begin with. The cyan Lumia 900 is more popular than the black version so far.  The stores that are selling out of the Lumia 900 are presumably staffed by employees who aren’t steering buyers towards the iPhone over the Lumia 900.

(Read: Lumia 900 Review)

We don’t know what AT&T’s sales expectations for the device were, nor do we know how those numbers compare to Nokia’s estimates. If the two estimates were similar, Nokia finally has some good news. Nokia needs the Lumia 900 and its future Windows Phones to sell well for the company to survive. Microsoft also needs the Lumia 900 to succeed for its platform can gain enough market share to spur further investment in the Windows Phone device and app development. With Nokia essentially offering the phone for free until April 21, there’s a lot more opportunity for the Lumia 900.

Nokia will shell out a lot of money if the phone sells well until the 21st, but it will establish a user-base that will hopefully upgrade to future Lumia devices Windows Phone 8 Apollo is released.