• CNET, Monday, March 26, 2012 12:20 PM

The more people with smartphones, the bigger the mobile economy can get. It’s big news, then, that AT&T plans to sell Nokia's Lumia 900 smartphones for $99.99 -- with a two-year contract. “It is one of the most affordable flagship products AT&T has ever sold,” CNet reports. Not only that, but -- unlike other reasonably priced smartphones available to U.S. consumers -- the Lumia 900 comes packed with some serious hardware.

Indeed, the phone will have a 4.3-inch ClearBlack Amoled display, an 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss camera lens, and a higher capacity 1830 mAh battery, CNet reports. How can Nokia offer such an amazing deal? As CNet notes, it’s do or die for the Finnish phone maker. “Nokia badly needs a buzz-worthy hit product in the U.S., a market it has struggled to operate in over the last few years despite dominating early in the cellphone business.”

The same goes for Microsoft, which needs any Windows Phone to succeed, and establish some legitimacy to its platform. To date, Microsoft has had trouble convincing consumers that its relatively new mobile operating system is worth taking over Apple's iOS and Google's Android.

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