How can they justify the headline if <i>"Details and financial arrangements of the agreement were not released"</i>.<p>I know they go on to say <i>"this is likely a royalty deal similar to others that Microsoft has established"</i> but as far as I'm aware it's only rumours and hearsay about the other deals too.<p>The previous deal between them that is mentioned involved LG paying an ongoing royalty for using Linux, but Microsoft in turn making a "net balancing payment" (whatever that is?) to LG which sounds to me like it's more about making Linux appear patent encumbered than it is about making money directly.
I find it very disappointing that not more companies are standing up to Microsoft. Motorola has already gotten 6 out of 7 of Microsoft's patents invalidated in Court, and B&N will probably get a similar percentage invalidated in their case, too.<p>Even if they still end up paying for some patents in the end, it should be a much smaller sum, rather than paying almost as much as they do for the full WP7 license, which represents an entire OS.
While everyone was debating about whether Google was evil and a monopoly with 70% of search, Microsoft marches on with a desktop monopoly of 90% and a similar Office document monopoly.<p>Are you still feeding Microsoft? They are still a big problem, and have been for almost two decades.
Previous stories have talked about fees between $5 and $15, depending on what patents the manufacturer has that can be cross-licensed [1].<p>From what little I understand, it's essentially the same fee of $15 that Microsoft charges for each WP7 device, with the idea being not that Microsoft makes a significant amount of money from Android but that they make each manufacturer consider Android and WP7 equals in terms of up-front costs (with the hope that Microsoft can then offer a bit more to get WP7 signed up?).<p><a href="http://gigaom.com/2011/07/06/can-android-be-microsofts-next-1-billion-business/" rel="nofollow">http://gigaom.com/2011/07/06/can-android-be-microsofts-next-...</a>
Just that e.g. HTC and Samsung and Acer don't pay anything at all, they just promised to a) also make Win7 phones and b) tell the world they pay royalties.<p>Since LG was a Window Mobile shop in the past, I guess they did the same...
When's this scam gonna get busted wide open and Microsoft and its company officers shut down and thrown in jail?<p>Because if it were anyone else it would have been done and dusted ages ago.<p>The whole thing stinks and clearly, they've got help.