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Microsoft Now Collects Royalties From Over Half of All Android Devices
An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft has inked a deal with Compal Electronics, which pumps out gadgets that run Android and Chrome OS, for an undisclosed sum."
Microsoft has an explanatory weblog post; with this deal over half of all Android devices are licensing patents from Microsoft. Notably refusing to cooperate and instead opting for the court battle route are Motorola and Barnes and Noble.
MS may be making money off other peoples' work, but look at what this picture is telling us. Manufacturers would rather pay MS to not use their windows OSes. That's pretty damning!
Smaller companies may well end up paying more even if they win.
Corporate lawyers are pretty good at estimating the success of this sort of thing. Microsoft will probably offer to settle at some point, but have to carry this through a certain way because a threat of a lawsuit is worthless if you aren't seen to be willing to carry it out.
Notice how concepts such as justice and who's actually in the right don't come into this...
I guess if the cellphone manufacturers aren't willing to run Microsoft's mobile OS on their devices, Microsoft will just have to start acting like all the other patent trolls that don't make viable products either.