Microsoft Apps Will Be Pre-loaded On Lenovo and Motorola Android Devices (betanews.com)

An anonymous reader writes: There was a time when Microsoft was seen as the enemy of Linux and Apple communities. Understandably, at the time, the company only wanted Windows to succeed. Nowadays, however, the operating system is sort of inconsequential. Microsoft seems happy to have its software succeed on 'competitor' platforms such as iOS, Android, macOS, Ubuntu and more. Today, Microsoft announces that it has partnered with Lenovo on a new mobile initiative. The Windows-maker's productivity apps will be pre-loaded on Lenovo and Motorola-branded devices running Google's Linux-based Android operating system.As of earlier this year, Microsoft had over 74 Android OEM partners. As for submitter's take on this, it's pretty simple. Microsoft is going where users are. If they are not going to purchase Windows Phones, Microsoft will go to Android and iOS.

Comments

Re:White-washed submission

[Luthair]

So? As long as they are uninstallable taking a $10 line item out of the cost of the devices works better for the consumers.

Re:White-washed submission

[Junta]

It may be abuse, it may be a stupid patent, but it's not patent trolling. The point is that is a specific form of nastiness that describes company with literally *no* product but a patent portfolio and only makes money through litigation.

Re:White-washed submission

[Rob Y.]

What's worse is that you've already payed a patent royalty when you bought the card. But then you have to pay again for the ability to read it. That, IMO, is the biggest problem with data format patents. It's one thing to charge the producer of a file format a royalty - if they want to use the format, pay up. But it's another thing entirely to charge the consumer of a file another royalty. They didn't choose the format of the file, they simply bought it and want to be able to use it. We're not talking about a license for the software to read the file - we're talking about legally reverse-engineered software being slapped with a patent royalty.

The same applies to media codecs. If Apple or Amazon (or Google for that matter) want to sell you media files compressed with Microsoft's (or anyone else's) wonderful algorithm, they should pay for the privilege (assuming there's a valid patent on the algorithm). But at that point, the royalty's been paid, and the consumer shouldn't have to be restricted to playback on devices based on whether another royalty was paid.

Maybe if royalties could only be collected at the production end, they'd be higher. But that would only make non-encumbered formats a bigger bargain...