Microsoft's Most Profitable Mobile Operating System: Android 309
puddingebola writes "Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has a piece of commentary discussing Microsoft's profit from their patent claims on Android. From the article, 'To some, Windows 8 is a marketplace failure. But its flop has been nothing compared to Microsoft's problems in getting anyone to use its Windows Phone operating systems. You don't need to worry about Microsoft's bottom line though. Thanks to its Android patent agreements, Microsoft may be making as much as $8 per Android device. This could give Microsoft as much as $3.4 billion in 2013 from Android sales.'"
Re:Does anyone have a list of the patents? (Score:5, Informative)
The main ones are long filenames in FAT, ex-FAT for > 32GB SD cards, and ActiveSync.
There are alternatives for all of these, but in the case of Activesync alternatives, they are not as good, and in the case of FAT, it means getting the same filesystem drivers onto other computers and devices.
Re:Does anyone have a list of the patents? (Score:3, Informative)
Kinda' true, but no business of any reasonable size is going to use Google for email and calendaring. Google also doesn't do tasks, notes, etc.
And, FYI, Outlook/Exchange isn't all that expensive. I pay for subscriptions to a service for it, and it's reasonable.
Re:Fuck off (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah?
coverage: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/feds-may-use-subpoena-powers-to-study-patent-trolls/ [arstechnica.com]
explanation: http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=2013041110212889 [groklaw.net]
give it a few months. The wheels are turning, slowly but surely.
Re:WP8 Isn't all bad (Score:3, Informative)
There is a task switcher (hold down the back button and a list pops up with thumbnails from your open app). Also, with WP8, any app can run in the background as long as it conforms to certain rules about resource utilization. Not many apps use the feature yet, but the key ones like Skype do, where you want the app to do something even if the app is running in the background.
Re:I'll keep hiding (Score:4, Informative)
That is, until Microsoft asserts patent ownership on the stuff in your free software.
I believe several times they've claimed that Linux violates a number of unspecified patents they hold, but I don't believe they've ever been willing to disclose what they are.
One does have to wonder what these patents are, if the patents would survive scrutiny, or if the technology was actually invented by someone else before Microsoft patented it.
UDF file format (Score:4, Informative)
I have no personal experience here, but this UDF compatibility matrix [wikipedia.org] does not look too promising. Apparently there are five UDF versions and three variants within each version, and only the oldest versions (from 1996-1997) actually have wide OS support.
A bit more googling produces more comments from users about tricky [ortolo.eu] incompatibilities [linuxforums.org].
Re:Fuck off (Score:5, Informative)
this isn't how the system is designed or intended, this is how the system has been perverted.
making money off products you do not have any involvement in via patent extortion is a sign of a broken system and this is already reaching antitrust investigations.
Well I agree that the system is broken in various ways, but the point of the patent system is to make money off things that you aren't involved in. To allow & encourage people to publish their inventions in return for a cut whenever someone uses that invention. It is supposed to encourage invention, by allowing a monopoly to the first person to do something. They are not supposed to have to make a working product, just to publish their idea so that someone else might.
Now whether that's a good idea anymore is another discussion, but what you describe is what patents are designed to do.
Re:WP8 Isn't all bad (Score:4, Informative)
If Microsoft had pushed out the OS a couple of years earlier the mobile phone market would likely be a very different place.
Microsoft had a more capable mobile OS [slashdot.org] in 2001 than they have now with WP8. The hardware has finally reached a point where Windows Mobile could shine but they gave up and bought Danger and trotted out the Kin [wikipedia.org] which they spent over 2 years developing but gave up on in less than 6 mo. They were so desperate to get Windows Phone [wikipedia.org] out the door they left crucial features and backward compatibility out completely. Microsoft is all about bailing the water out of the boat instead of patching the leak.