Android pays $2 billion to Microsoft every year

Nomura's analyst recently published a report that, with the big sales of Android-powered smartphones, Microsoft can obtain approximately $2 billion in revenue from major manufacturers each year, and this revenue will only be mobile with Android. The hot and growing, what's going on here?

In fact, Microsoft has patents for the creation and updating of contacts including Flash Erase (Patent No. 6621746) (Patent No. 6909910), and a pop-up context menu system (Patent No. 5664133). These Microsoft patented technologies have been It is used on Android and even mother's mother Linux system.

With regard to disputes over these patented technologies, Microsoft and Google rushed to court, but in the end all of them were won by Microsoft. In order to continue using the Android system, many mobile phone manufacturers had to reach a series of agreements with Microsoft to pay a certain patent fee before they could use it. Android system.

Those paying big heads include: HTC sells one Android device each time it needs to pay Microsoft's patent fee of 5 US dollars, and every Samsung Android phone sold by Samsung needs to pay a US$15 patent fee to Microsoft.

In September of this year, we reported that "Every Android phone sold, Microsoft can earn $5". At that time, the analyst gave a figure of about $1 billion. However, a few months later, with the successive release of a bunch of Android flagships, Microsoft's patent licensing fees have also risen, and are expected to reach $2 billion.

After the acquisition of Nokia, Microsoft seemed to loosen its own Windows Phone system licensing fees. It is reported that Microsoft is changing the WP system's licensing strategy to allow more vendors to actively participate in it. Microsoft's change is very large, Android vendors may even be free to install WP.