“This morning’s most significant smartphone patent news comes out of Asia: Hon Hai, the parent company of Foxconn (manufacturer of more than 40 percent of the world’s consumer electronics), signed a worldwide patent license agreement with Microsoft to address infringement issues created by Google’s Android and Chrome operating systems,” Florian Mueller reports for FOSS Patents. “Microsoft has entered into license agreements with numerous device makers (including Samsung, HTC and LG) as well as contract manufacturers.”
Mueller reports, “The fact that any Android and Chrome devices made by the Hon Hai group in the future will result in royalty payments to Microsoft is, in and of itself, bad news for Google, which has flatly denied that Android devices need a patent license from Microsoft even though its own Motorola Mobility subsidiary has in practical terms already lost its own patent dispute with Microsoft by a wide margin.”
“The previous day, Google’s executive chairman Eric Schmidt announced 1.5 million Android device activations per day and predicted that one billion Android devices would be in use by the end of the year,” Mueller reports, “But this success is built in no small part on intellectual property belonging to third parties including Apple, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, and probably many others, given how many patent infringement claims have been brought against Android over the lsat couple of years, including by large players such a British Telecom. The infringement issues to which Google exposes the Android ecosystem need to be addressed, and this costs money, which in turn may affect Android’s longer-term competitiveness. The Microsoft-Hon Hai patent license agreement is already the 20th announced Android patent license deal (there may very well be other deals that were struck but not announced).”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The Fragmandroid stolen product keeps getting more complicated and more expensive.
I wonder if FaceTurd will be the next to cough up because of FaceTurd Home’s use of Android as its building block?
I hope that is the case, it wouild deal two blows with one swipe to G–gle and F—T–d!
Google’s “free” Android model is not sustainable. Period.
HP should have kept webOS alive if for no other reason than to provide an alternative to Android. The time where that will become a necessity is fast approaching.
WebOS was heavily influenced by iOS – it too must be seen as the polishing of a turd
nothing more useless than polishing a turd… Droid is the turd
And the only one not paying is…………guess who……GOOGLE. What a joke! Eric and Larry must be laughing their butt off.
and Andy Rubin the thief behind AndyBotOS.
I don’t mind Windows phone as an alternative to the iPhone. They didn’t blantly go out and copy, sure the tiles thing isn’t as good but at least it’s their own design and ideas.