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?