Microsoft is most notably well known for their Windows operating system, easily being the top dog for decades now. They’ve also been in the mobile market for a while and eventually evolved to Windows Phone 7 and soon Windows Phone 8. An interesting side that not too many know about the tech giant is that they make money off of Android thanks to some patent royalties.
Just how much are we talking? Well, an analyst firm by the name of Trefis has reported that Microsoft received $792 Million in the second quarter of 2012 from Android royalties. Yes, almost a Billion dollars. For a company that earns tens of Billions of dollars a year, that’s a nice little revenue stream that’ll keep coming in whether they do anything or not.
Microsoft earns the patent royalties from both Samsung and HTC. Samsung pays $10-$12 per device and HTC pays $10 per device. Since both companies are some of the top manufacturers of Android devices, it clearly adds up, as evidenced by Microsoft’s decent paycheck. And this could not be the end of their payday either considering they’ve been going after Motorola over the use of their FAT and meeting requests and group scheduling patents.
While we’re not so sure about HTC, Samsung continues to do amazingly well which, with the Galaxy S III in full swing and the Note 2 coming soon, we could see Microsoft take even more money to the bank.