If you bought an Android smartphone or tablet in the last six months, odds are surprisingly good that you paid a considerable chunk of the purchase price to Microsoft. The dinosaur of the software world has successfully sued and/or negotiated with most of the major Android OEMs, including Samsung, HTC, and lately LG. Microsoft claims that over 70% of the Android hardware sold in the US includes licensing fees paid to the company – a disturbing statistic for an open-source operating system.
Microsoft hasn’t disclosed how much it’s making off of its Android-related patents, though estimates put the amount in hundreds of millions of dollars a year. Tellingly, they’ve stayed away from Google itself and recent acquisition Motorola. Not content with their ill-gotten gains, Microsoft took to Twitter to boast about the agreements. Using the hashtag #anotherandroidlicense, Microsoft’s head of Corporate Communications sent messages like “we are the 70%” and continued the company line that Android is neither open nor free. This seems like something of a self-fulfilling prophecy at this point.
Does anyone else find it off that Microsoft is revelling in the relatively small amount of money it’s pulling by sabotaging a competing product, while its own Windows Phone 7 platform languishes in almost every market? At last count, WP7 had a 2% worldwide market share; that’s just slightly behind the former Windows Mobile, which hasn’t been placed on any new hardware in years. Compare that to a 53% market share for Android in the same NPD report, and Microsoft’s victory dance seems pretty hollow.
You stay classy, Redmond.
[via Beta News]
Microsoft, the blood sucking tick of the mobile world.
At least, they sign deals and let Android devices be sold. Furthermore, they now provide their patents portfolio to protect the companies they sign deals with. I know some other company who simply wants to FORBID android devices from being sold at all. So which one do you prefer?
Why do both use courts, and not markets, to compete? Very telling.
Calm down people, Microsoft is losing $1B a year on Bing. Let’s throw them a bone or two to boost their ego. They will certainly need it after CES. [edit] Oh sorry, I said Bing is losing $1B per year. It’s actually $1B per quarter. Ouch.
How would this be considered sabotage? What are they actually being paid for? It seems like if there wasn’t a legitimate reason, even smaller companies would fight this in court.
Think about the cost to fight MS in court. And what do you gain when your done? At best, your attorney fees and then you’re back where you started. Think about what effect just having a IP legal battle with MS would have on your investors. Private firms, without investors, are trying to be busy innovating. They don’t have the time and monetary resources to direct the legal for an indefinite period. MS knows this. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Note that all the deals are really with companies that will sell WP7 devices. There are no details on the deal they struck. Its probably buy Android licence and get a WP7 licence free.
Like Murdock, MS will receive a PR knockout counterpunch when its least popular ‘spokesman’ documents a maliciously ignorant bias.
Does anyone know exactly which patents these devices are infringing on, other than the FAT filesystem?
Not sure but I think that it may be for the MS Exchange code (aka Corporate email/calenda aka ActiveSync) we have included with our Android devices (use it or not, the app have the necessary code to access MS Exchange our of the box. MS doesn’t give that code for free.
People you are using MS products everyday and made your life easier. Why don’t people hate apple as much? THey have the patent and are getting paid for their IP. Why don’t you understand that nobody works for free!! Let’s download free, lets use free apps on android, this does not make any sense. People need to be paid to eat an live no?
Leave MS Alone. Morons wanting to pay an extra 300 a computer and let someone dictate the applications your phone can run (apple) need to be taxed. Android will never be truly “productive” unless linked to enterprise apps like Outlook and Office anyway. Your sheep. And wees like pork chops.
DonRicky: You’re an idiot. Keep “clickin’ what they give ya” and believing yourself talented and that the world revolves around the little gui that you’re “allowed” to know. Become a developer of multiple platforms and quickly learn what every developer already knows…MS is pure evil and their platform is a bloated pile. They’ve been operating on the same playbook for years; Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. They’ve been crafting traps for every developer since the beginning. If you can’t, for one minute, put on your objective hat and come up with scores of salient examples of them doing this, then your opinion on this topic is moot.
Seriously, think of any technology MS is involved in and determine in which phase of their “assimilation and subsequent destruction” process their in. Maybe if you understood that, you could appreciate other developers battling MS, and their legion of religious “zombies” like yourself, from having only a MS Internet (metered and licensed per concurrent session, of course)…an Internet we’d have to patch and reboot every day….and with “secure” AD enabled DNS. Think they wouldn’t?If MS actually worried about innovation (not reactive EEE trapping) and actual standards compliance and interoperability, developers wouldn’t have to spend 70% of their time keeping, for instance, IE compatibility working for MS zombies like you. Imagine the innovation we’d see if we didn’t have to do reverse engineer MS implementations of purposefully broken standards. If they were not in the right place at the right time, and didn’t have the billions of people who’ve never known any other way, they’d be largely irrelevant. All their progress, since they purchased their initial OS, has been almost all reactive to other companies/standards innovation. They survive because of sheer inertia to convert the religious idiots, just like you, whom in their heart of hearts, are terrified to leave the little knowledge box MS keeps you in. It’s scary out there isn’t it? It’s always the same thing with MS zombies people like you. Be honest with yourself, you have to believe that world revolves around MS because it’s all you know. You just can’t come to terms with that fact that if you’re bloated gui gets taken away that you have zero residual skills. You’re “skills” are worthless if MS loses. Hence, you’re “all in.”
DonRicky: You’re an idiot. Keep “clickin’ what they give ya” and believing yourself talented and that the world revolves around the little gui that you’re “allowed” to know. Become a developer of multiple platforms and quickly learn what every developer already knows…MS is pure evil and their platform is a bloated pile. They’ve been operating on the same playbook for years; Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. They’ve been crafting traps for every developer since the beginning. If you can’t, for one minute, put on your objective hat and come up with scores of salient examples of them doing this, then your opinion on this topic is moot.
Seriously, think of any technology MS is involved in and determine in which phase of their “assimilation and subsequent destruction” process their in. Maybe if you understood that, you could appreciate other developers battling MS, and their legion of religious “zombies” like yourself, from having only a MS Internet (metered and licensed per concurrent session, of course)…an Internet we’d have to patch and reboot every day….and with “secure” AD enabled DNS. Think they wouldn’t?If MS actually worried about innovation (not reactive EEE trapping) and actual standards compliance and interoperability, developers wouldn’t have to spend 70% of their time keeping, for instance, IE compatibility working for MS zombies like you. Imagine the innovation we’d see if we didn’t have to do reverse engineer MS implementations of purposefully broken standards. If they were not in the right place at the right time, and didn’t have the billions of people who’ve never known any other way, they’d be largely irrelevant. All their progress, since they purchased their initial OS, has been almost all reactive to other companies/standards innovation. They survive because of sheer inertia to convert the religious idiots, just like you, whom in their heart of hearts, are terrified to leave the little knowledge box MS keeps you in. It’s scary out there isn’t it? It’s always the same thing with MS zombies people like you. Be honest with yourself, you have to believe that world revolves around MS because it’s all you know. You just can’t come to terms with that fact that if you’re bloated gui gets taken away that you have zero residual skills. You’re “skills” are worthless if MS loses. Hence, you’re “all in.”
I hate that guy! Looks like one of those creatures from a horror film.
Since MS requires a NDA with the deals, MS can claim any amount they want, the NDA prevents signers from saying anything. My guess: MS overstates the amount/unit by 100x.