HTC Is Paying Microsoft $5 For Every Android Phone

jcarr writes "According to Citi analyst Walter Pritchard, HTC is paying Microsoft $5 for each Android phone it makes. This may be related to a report from last year: MS and HTC sign patent deal. So now we can't even write a free OS?"

Comments

not every phone

[Anonymous Coward]

just the phones sold in the USA, Microsoft patents aren't valid anywhere else (95% of the globe)

Re:I look at this as a good thing

[airfoobar]

An "interesting strategy", huh? The problem is that HTC and others aren't going to let this dig into their own pockets -- we as the consumers have to pay HTC an extra $5-10 per phone so they can give it to Microsoft. And what did Microsoft do to deserve that money? It's because they have a bunch of useful patents such as:

- Give people easy ways to navigate through information provided by their device apps via a separate control window with tabs;
- Enable display of a webpage's content before the background image is received, allowing users to interact with the page faster;
- Allow apps to superimpose download status on top of the downloading content;
- Permit users to easily select text in a document and adjust that selection; and
- Provide users the ability to annotate text without changing the underlying document.

This is the Microsoft tax all over again, in the form of a multi-billion patent troll. Others can't innovate around Microsoft because Microsoft is the anti-competitive assclown it's always been. Regulators and legislators take notice!! Get rid of software patents already.

Re:Software Patents.

[Thoreauly Nuts]

"Knowledge Sir, should be free to all." ----Harcourt Fenton Mudd

(in response to an accusation by James T. Kirk that he didn't pay royalties on patents.)

Star Trek Original Series Season 2 Episode 8 - "I, Mudd" (1967)
Time of quote in Episode: 13:37

Can I FINALLY get my nerd card now?

Re:Don't sign dumb deals

[Alex Belits]

Nope. They are plain vanilla Android phones. HTC makes other phones (with identical or nearly identical hardware) that run Microsoft software. This looks more like classic Microsoft scam when they ask "per processor" fee for all hardware produced -- regardless if it does or doesn't run anything from Microsoft.