Microsoft's Hottest New Profit Center: Android 276
jbrodkin writes "One of Microsoft's hottest new profit centers is a smartphone platform you've definitely heard of: Android. Google's Linux-based mobile operating system is a favorite target for Microsoft's patent attorneys, who are suing numerous Android vendors and just today announced that another manufacturer has agreed to write checks to Microsoft every time it ships an Android device. Vendors paying off Microsoft for the right to use Android now include HTC, Velocity Micro, General Dynamics, Onkyo Corp. and Wistron. Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform, and its latest patent agreement announced Tuesday indicates Microsoft is also going after Google's Linux-based Chromebooks."
Re:Microsoft becoming a lawyer company à la S (Score:2, Informative)
As much as the anti-MS crowd on slashdot would like this to be true, just saying this does not make it the case. Even if MS got $10 for EVERY Android device, and the 500k untils/month I found on wikipedia is close to accurate, that is 6 million units per year, or $60 million a year. And even if you say that other patent troll-esque licensing agreements multiply that by 10x again to $600 million a year
Microsoft made almost 17 billion last quarter.
Microsoft is a lot of things, but they are not SCO. They are not classic patent trolls with no product. They are basically just like Apple, IBM and Oracle and Google and every other big company. They use their patents to maintain their market share and stifle competition. Bad, but not SCO bad.
Using HTC Estimates and WP7 Numbers, $150M $30M (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft likely makes more money from Android than its own Windows phone platform,
This statement just cries out for at least a small amount of supporting evidence. The article doesn't appear to make this claim - so did jbrodkin simply pull this out of his nether regions, as I suspect?
It's been the subject of recent speculation [osnews.com] given the numbers that HTC pays them $5 for each phone and has sold 30 million sets totaling $150 million. And then compare to what WP7 makes MS:
Microsoft has admitted selling 2 million WP7 licenses, and assuming a price of $15 per license, that's $30 million in revenue.
Okay so that could be incorrect but we're just seeing more [slashdot.org] and more Android licenses [slashdot.org] resulting in payment to Microsoft. And I don't think WP7 is keeping up with that.
Is this conclusive? Not at all. The above numbers could be false. Is it probable? Well, that's for you to decide.