“Google’s mobile operating system Android may be winning the smartphone wars with over 75 percent market share. But Apple and Microsoft could be making more from Android than Google — up to 600 percent more next year,” John Koetsier writes for VentureBeat.
MacDailyNews Take: Puleeze. Market share is but one metric and taken alone hardly signifies “winning.” For example: Apple utterly dominates mobile device market with 6% market share – and 77% of the profits. Who’s really winning?
“This past weekend Apple and HTC signed a patent cross-licensing deal that, according to one analyst, could see Apple collect between $6 and $8 for each and every Android smartphone HTC sells. And Microsoft, which has been working on licensing its patents to Android manufacturers for a number of years and has licensing deals with LG, Acer, Samsung, and many other companies, collects as much as $5 per device,” Koetsier writes. “Google, on the other hand, though it has not broken out Android revenue, has been calculated by Asymco as recently as April of this year — based on data Google was forced to reveal in court filings — as low as $1.70 per Android device, per year. Even if it’s $2, that’s only a sixth as much as the combined $12 that Microsoft and Apple could make for each Android smartphone.”
Koetsier writes, “That assumes, of course, that Microsoft collects royalties from all Android manufacturers … and that Apple will duplicate its HTC licensing deal with Samsung and all the other smartphone companies.”
Read more in the full article here.