You know who is really happy about the success of Android?
Microsoft.
Yes, you heard me right – Microsoft. You see, Microsoft has succeeded in bullying convincing the manufacturers of Android devices to pay Microsoft a patent licensing fee. This is because Microsoft has threatened other manufacturers using Android in the past with patent litigation. And it seems nobody really wants to challenge Microsoft’s legal prowess on this, so they pay the fee.
The latest to pony up to the Godfather Microsoft, is Nikon, who is now using Android in some of their cameras.
So Google doesn’t collect a fee from someone using Android (it is open source, after all), but Microsoft does. Just how much money is Android generating for Microsoft? Well, in Q2 of 2012, Microsoft collected nearly $800 million dollars. So it’s not a stretch to say that in a very short amount of time, Microsoft will be pulling in over $5 billion/year from Android patent licenses.
The real question to ask would be this: Just how fast are revenues from Android growing for Microsoft versus how fast revenues are growing from Windows Phone.
I suspect Android licenses are a bigger chunk of change for Microsoft right now, and for the projected future.
I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t mind taking these manufacturers money, but man, it sure has to sting knowing people would rather pay you a licensing fee to use a competitors product than to pay you a fee to use yours.
