Microsoft demands $15 for every Samsung-made Android smartphone

Taking the highly competitive smartphone market into perspective, one would assume that Android's steady growth would be a bad thing for Microsoft and its Windows Phone platform. However, this may not be necessarily true as the company is actually raking in some big money from other manufacturers' Android-powered devices.

HTC, for example, has to pay royalties to Microsoft for each Android device sold due to the fact that the latter holds a number of patents involved in Google's platform. However, the $5 per device sold, which Microsoft is getting from HTC, seem nothing compared to the $15 per device that the maker of Windows Mobile has just demanded from Samsung.

If we take only the Samsung Galaxy S and its successor, the Samsung Galaxy S II, into account, of which the manufacturer has sold over 13 million units combined so far, then Microsoft should be expecting a check for at least 195 million in its mailbox pretty soon. It is said, however, that Samsung will try to lower the fee to $10 per device and will offer to expand its Windows Phone portfolio in return. Suddenly, the possibility of getting a Windows Phone version of the Samsung Galaxy S II sounds much more plausible, doesn't it?

source: Reuters via All About Phones (translated)

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