Microsoft announced yesterday that it has completed a licensing agreement with Taiwanese Original Design Manufacturer (ODM) Compal Electronics for Android and Chrome devices it designs and manufactures.
This is the tenth such agreement encompassing Android devices, of which nine have been announced within the last 120 days.
It certainly seems to follow a classic lesser-of-two-evils model as compared to the more litigious route, but one can’t help but wonder whether comapnies feel strong armed into making these far-reaching deals.
As a lay person, it would be of interest to know what specific aspects of Android (and Chrome, to a lesser extent) allegedly derive from Microsoft intellectual property. Of further interest is the fact that Microsoft has existing litigation against Motorola Mobility, as indicated in the infographic above. This article indicates that Motorola is CCI’s (Compal Communications Incorporated, a subsidiary of Compal Electronics that manufactures handsets) biggest customer. Certainly all those handsets aren’t just dumb phones? What, if anything, does one have to do with the other?
The two pie charts below illustrate two different sets of data that this announcement envelopes. The first represents the US Android smartphone market share by unit count for the second quarter of calendar year 2011. This demonstrates that manufacturers representing 53 of every hundred Android handsets are beholden to Microsoft. The second is worldwide ODM market share by revenue for the same period. Curious that one should be based on unit sales, and the other by revenue, unless there’s some difference in reporting standards for the market or some other factor? The whole mess certainly warrants a closer look.
