Microsoft Making More Money on Android Than on Windows Phone

[mikexilva]

Ora aqui está um dos motivos pelo qual gostaria de ver o LEAF (um carro limpo e com uma imagem benéfica) isento do software Micro$oft no seu computador de bordo:
No final quando queremos comprar um telemóvel com Android (que é um sistema operativo desenvolvido pelo Google e disponibilizado gratuitamente para as marcas) pagamos mais pelo aparelho porque a Microsoft impõe uma taxa escondida para seu próprio beneficio (sem ter nada que ver com o assunto)!!!
(Como são grandes, dão-se ao luxo de fazer estes jogos sujos com patentes, chantagens, etc com os fabricantes, e ainda conseguem abafar para não ficarem mal vistos).

http://phandroid.com/2011/05/27/what-if ... s-phone-7/



Yep, you heard that right. Microsoft makes more money from Android’s success than they do the success of their own platform. A lot more. You had to guess that in a world of an ineffective patent system, someone somewhere would try to bank off of Android’s fast-growing success. And you had to guess that it’d be one of their biggest competitors (as far as their name goes, anyway) in this space.
Microsoft gets at least $5 for the sale of every HTC phone due to patent infringement settlements that were agreed upon in courts. Doing some quick math, one analyst took the amount of Android devices he estimates HTC’s sold to date – 30 million – and came up with $150 million. He did the same with Microsoft, taking their 2 million units sold to date and multiplying that by $15, the cost for OEMs to use Windows Phone 7. That came out to be just $30 million.
And that’s just HTC alone. Microsoft is looking to get the same break from other Android manufacturers to get anywhere between $7.50 and $12.50 per license. It’s amazing and does well to exploit the problems with today’s patent system. All you need to do is stake your claim to fame on a certain technology and wait until someone hits homerun on it.
I won’t deny Windows Phone 7 is great in its own way, but it certainly hasn’t been as successful out of the starting gate as everyone thought it’d be. Android wasn’t immediately successful right away either, but Microsoft had years of experience and marketshare under their belts. Only time can tell if they’ll just continue riding the coattails of Android or if they’ll really break into their own as far as mindshare and market share go, but as it stands, they need Android to make significant amounts of money in mobile licensing. [Business Insider via BGR]

[ruimegas]

Vergonhoso...

[mikexilva]

Precisamos de justiça para acabar com os abusos do falso sistema de patentes mal implementado que prejudicam os consumidores e travam a inovação...
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When patents attack Android (From official Google Blog)
8/03/2011 12:37:00 PM

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/ ... droid.html

I have worked in the tech sector for over two decades. Microsoft and Apple have always been at each other’s throats, so when they get into bed together you have to start wondering what's going on. Here is what’s happening:

Android is on fire. More than 550,000 Android devices are activated every day, through a network of 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers. Android and other platforms are competing hard against each other, and that’s yielding cool new devices and amazing mobile apps for consumers.

But Android’s success has yielded something else: a hostile, organized campaign against Android by Microsoft, Oracle, Apple and other companies, waged through bogus patents.

They’re doing this by banding together to acquire Novell’s old patents (the “CPTN” group including Microsoft and Apple) and Nortel’s old patents (the “Rockstar” group including Microsoft and Apple), to make sure Google didn’t get them; seeking $15 licensing fees for every Android device; attempting to make it more expensive for phone manufacturers to license Android (which we provide free of charge) than Windows Mobile; and even suing Barnes & Noble, HTC, Motorola, and Samsung. Patents were meant to encourage innovation, but lately they are being used as a weapon to stop it.

A smartphone might involve as many as 250,000 (largely questionable) patent claims, and our competitors want to impose a “tax” for these dubious patents that makes Android devices more expensive for consumers. They want to make it harder for manufacturers to sell Android devices. Instead of competing by building new features or devices, they are fighting through litigation.

This anti-competitive strategy is also escalating the cost of patents way beyond what they’re really worth. Microsoft and Apple’s winning $4.5 billion for Nortel’s patent portfolio was nearly five times larger than the pre-auction estimate of $1 billion. Fortunately, the law frowns on the accumulation of dubious patents for anti-competitive means — which means these deals are likely to draw regulatory scrutiny, and this patent bubble will pop.

We’re not naive; technology is a tough and ever-changing industry and we work very hard to stay focused on our own business and make better products. But in this instance we thought it was important to speak out and make it clear that we’re determined to preserve Android as a competitive choice for consumers, by stopping those who are trying to strangle it.

We’re looking intensely at a number of ways to do that. We’re encouraged that the Department of Justice forced the group I mentioned earlier to license the former Novell patents on fair terms, and that it’s looking into whether Microsoft and Apple acquired the Nortel patents for anti-competitive means. We’re also looking at other ways to reduce the anti-competitive threats against Android by strengthening our own patent portfolio. Unless we act, consumers could face rising costs for Android devices — and fewer choices for their next phone.

Posted by David Drummond, Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer