HTC to pay M$ $20 to $40 per phone to license Android ?
|
| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| henke54 Apr 29, 2010 4:12 AM EDT |
Quoting:Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group in San Jose, California, estimates that HTC and most other handset manufacturers would have to pay Microsoft $20 to $40 per phone to license the intellectual property required for Android.http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-04-29/microsoft-says-g... |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 29, 2010 7:54 AM EDT |
henke54,Quoting:Rob Enderle [...] estimates that [licencees] [...] would have to pay Microsoft $20 to $40 per phone [...]Let's just hope this is about as accurate as the usual wisdom driveled out of Enderle, Inc. YBT |
| gus3 Apr 29, 2010 9:41 AM EDT |
"Enderle Group"? More like "Enderle Groupies". |
| tuxchick Apr 29, 2010 9:55 AM EDT |
The Enderle Group is Rob Enderle and his wife. No, really, someone married him. If those figures are correct, that is some world-class extortion. |
| hkwint Apr 29, 2010 10:02 AM EDT |
Quoting:No, really, someone married him. Sorry to hear that. I knew it! I knew it! I knew this world is flawed. |
| JaseP Apr 29, 2010 1:35 PM EDT |
I was expecting someone to mention this,... but they haven't,... so I will,... The GPL (ver. 2) either forbids or requires disclosure of cross-patent deals, doesn't it?!?!? This whole M$ suing the world thing is getting old,... very old... Someone with a patent war chest has got to take them to task... This is starting to get out of hand... 99.999% of these guys are settling because it's cheaper to do so than to kick M$'s butt in a patent suit. |
| azerthoth Apr 29, 2010 1:41 PM EDT |
JaseP, what part of this runs counter to the GPL? To my knowledge the only thing thats GPL'd in there is the kernel. |
| JaseP Apr 29, 2010 2:03 PM EDT |
M$'s typical FUD claims are owing to the FAT32 support in the kernel... The FAT32 being the major subject of the patent suit against TomTom. It's also a patent that was invalidated ONCE by the USPTO and re-instated after a closed hearing on the matter (with just M$ and the USPTO attending, BTW)... And, who knows, there may be other GPL'd open source apps in HTC's implementation of `droid... |
| azerthoth Apr 29, 2010 3:24 PM EDT |
Curious where you got the information that the FAT32 patent was part of the deal, or was it an assumption because they have whipped that horse recently. |
| henke54 Apr 29, 2010 3:44 PM EDT |
ironic or not ? : Google pays Micro$oft for hardware : http://www.ozcarguide.com/technology/cellphone-pda/2909-goog... Micro$oft pays Google for software : http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1603486/los-angeles... ;-P |
| JaseP Apr 29, 2010 6:12 PM EDT |
At azerthoth: Whipped that DEAD horse, actually... They seem to develop playbooks for how to deal with open source and just follow them like mindless zombies,... Kind of like M$ users... But yeah, it's an assumption on my part... An assumption that also makes me believe that Enderle's "assessment" as to the license fees are total crap. HTC would have paid not much more than nuisance suit value, just to be certain of the outcome. As a typical M$ toadie, he puts stuff out there to try and make them look better... I wonder when they are going to comission their next "independant" study from him?!?!? |
| azerthoth Apr 29, 2010 6:33 PM EDT |
@JaseP, if you could please lay off the rhetoric ... well I guess you did sort of answer the question I asked. No facts just more smoke. You see facts are wonderful things, rhetoric on the other hand just adds more clutter to the signal to noise ratio. Makes it kind of difficult to have a meaningful and informative discussion. |
| gus3 Apr 29, 2010 9:07 PM EDT |
GPL v3 section 11 concerns patents. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.txt |
| azerthoth Apr 29, 2010 9:17 PM EDT |
again gus3 since the whole thing, including patents involved are under a NDA ... just what part of the GPLvAnything is being involved? |
| jsusanka Apr 30, 2010 10:41 PM EDT |
is microsoft relevant anymore? besides these extortion schemes what have they done. they sell turdware to corporations that force them to spend more money to make up for their flawed operating system. window vista and windows 7 are a joke and are they really relevant anymore. they still have the dll nightmare and you still have to spend more money to actually make it useful. I know of no one that runs their mission critical website on windows. maybe this is better for the world. microsoft will stop writing software and people will just pay them to shut up and go away and they will slowly wither and fade away. |
| gus3 Apr 30, 2010 10:50 PM EDT |
Quoting:maybe this is better for the world. microsoft will stop writing software and people will just pay them to shut up and go away and they will slowly wither and fade away.To h&!! with paying them for anything. For all the damage they've inflicted on the world, they should be sued into oblivion. They should be made to pay until there's nothing left to pay with. |
| Teron May 01, 2010 10:29 AM EDT |
That'll take over 40 years, even if the company stopped turning a profit and was fined two million a day :D |
| tuxchick May 01, 2010 12:38 PM EDT |
What a pleasant thought, Teron, 40 years of fines :) I wonder what MS' financials really are. Haven't had time to dig through the relevant public docs (SEC filings, annual reports, blah blah), and apparently nobody else has either, because they always quote the same fantastic figures published in other articles. But despite years of trying they have only two profitable product lines, Office and Windows. They shell out huge amounts of money for kickbacks er I mean partner marketing and other incentives, and they have a wide range of money sinks like their endless maniacal quest to make it big in search, gaming, SaaS, and other stuff. They always have a wad of lawsuits going, which they mostly lose. I have a suspicion that these Linux patent licensing deals consist of small token payments and big PR fluff, and that MS are not as rich as they want us to believe. |
| hkwint May 02, 2010 12:07 PM EDT |
Quoting:Is Microsoft relevant anymore An issue I'd liked to address in some article maybe, I've been thinking about it. My POV: Microsoft is a barrel raft floating on four barrels, Windows and Office like mentioned, patents and 'all else'. There used to be a fifth barrel, being 'closed standards', but because of the recent moves by governments and the case of the EC vs. Microsoft I think that barrel has sunk. The barrel of desktop / laptop Windows is due to their (secret?) cont(r)acts with OEM's. However, desk- and laptops aren't that important anymore I believe, as I think more smartphones, netbooks and tablets are sold than desk- and laptops, but I'm not entirely sure. Should back the claim with some numbers. Looking at the future: The UMPC was epic failure 1, Windows 7 on the Slate was epic failure two, and the Courier tablet was epic failure three. Delevering too little too late in Windows Phone 7 is epic failure four. And the dependency on binary software from third parties which Microsoft can't recompile for ARM, hence the dependency on X86 has been epic failure five. Those who sell desktops products, like Dell, Asus and HP, are in the region of influence of Microsoft because they're dependent on Windows. Other companies, like TI, HTC, ARM, Verizon, Motorola, Archos etc. are not dependent on desk/laptops, so they're beyond the region of influence. Hence, they can put Linux on whatever device they want. Heck, they can even spent $100 million to advertize a Linux(-kernel)-solution, like Verizon and Motorola did, without fearing counter-measures from Microsoft. This shows while the center of mass of personal computing is shifting from Desk/laptops to net- and smartbook, smartphones and tablets, Microsoft is loosing influence and Windows is losing sales. While this shift continues, Windows will continue decreasing in 'relevancy'. The barrel of Office is quickly diminishing in value because of OpenOffice, ODF and OOXML. Even if OOXML were a success, it's not as useful to lock in customers as in the past. Besides, more and more people and companies are starting to understand the advantage of free document formats. Apart from that, there's another consideration: Nokia is using KOffice to make an MS-Office document viewer for their mobile platforms (MeeGo I guess?), another proof MS Office is diminishing in relevancy. Both of these products face competition from webapps by the way, I believe. Microsoft even felt forced to offer a free version of MS Office, and they cut their prices of Windows in Asia. Which probably means less income per license. Luckily for them, the number of customers is growing. The barrel of "All else" only floats because air is being pumped in from the Office and Windows barrel. There are some nice research projects, like Singularity and Surface, but they haven't been successful beyond the lab. So the two 'offensive' barrels: Ways to gain new customers by means of selling products, Windows and Office, are starting to fill up with water. As a result, the third barrel has difficulty of continue floating. Two defensive barrels remain. The first of them, lock in due to standards was starting to sink: SMB protocol had to be 'released' to the public, OOXML was not the success MS hoped for, Silverlight is still not as ubiquitous on the web as Flash and besides Silverlight will probably never make it on Apple devices, but most important: Massachussets and to a lesser degree other government bodies started raising public awareness about open document standards. Which leaves only one 'big' barrel to keep the raft afloat: IP. Now, nobody making their own products is interested in 'copyright' that much I think, the most important protocols are open and lots of it are already engineered. Trademarks aren't that valuable either, no 'savvy' user will associate Microsoft with 'flawless working' products, let alone 'Magic, unbelievable and revolutionary'. So most that's left of Microsoft is in the patents. Hence why they're starting to generate an income from products other people made, a smart move if you can't compete on products. So Microsoft is mainly relevant because of its patents nowadays I suggest. The best way to counter the 'patent threat' would be to get rid of software patents alltogether, but that's probably not going to happen given the political / corporate 'powers that be' who control the law. So the second best way to counter these threats would be setting up 'defensive' patent pools la Open Innovation Network. Something the Open Handset Alliance should do as well. Reminds me of a new slogan: "LXer, your continued source for free tech analysis". Provided by the Kwint group (a group of one), I might add. |
| tuxchick May 02, 2010 12:15 PM EDT |
And a fine group of one it is, Hans, I think your assessment is pretty good. MS are so invested in lock-in they haven't done anything new or quality in years. Their whole stack, from top to bottom (Office, Sharepoint, DotNetOrWhateverItIsNow, servers, etc.) is one big tangled mess of pointless dependencies whose only function is lockin. It's hard to "innovate" when you handcuff yourself. Windows Mobile could possibly go somewhere (oh quit laughing, it could) if they could change their focus from shackles to good software. |
Posting in this forum is limited to members of the group: [ForumMods, SITEADMINS, MEMBERS.]
Becoming a member of LXer is easy and free. Join Us!