In October 2010, Apple offered to license its portfolio of patents to Samsung provided the Korean company was willing to pay on the order of $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet.
Apple offered to license patents to Samsung in 2010
In October 2010, Apple offered to license its portfolio of patents to Samsung provided the Korean company was willing to pay on the order of $30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet.
“$30 per smartphone and $40 per tablet” is more like a non-judicial punitive damages award than a patent license royalty, so is anyone really surprised Samsung didn’t take this deal?
How much is Microsoft getting from the recent deals?
About $5 a unit
40$ is about all the profit the Android manufacturers make. To them this deal must’ve felt like a joke.
They are the ONLY manufacturer still turning a profit on Android. I think it was a wise choice not to agree to these terms.
And no that doesn’t mean I agree with them copying.
Only execs at Samsung and Microsoft, and their lawyers, know for sure. Rumors were that it is/was $15 per handset, but veteran MS watcher (IMHO the most accurate of the Redmond reporters) Mary Jo Foley thinks that number is high.
We all know that only Apple is making serious margins on smartphone handsets, so anything that reduces that is painful to other manufacturers. Assuming $15 is the MS royalty, Apple adding 200% onto that couldn’t be thought of as anything other than a deal-breaker. A MS royalty lower than $15 only makes Apple’s price even more outrageous. Which is why I think the offer was never more than theatre.
I’m not saying Apple doesn’t have a right to ask for whatever it wants. I’m just suggesting that licensing patents to Samsung was never really their true desire. Clearly they were setting themselves up for the inevitable litigation. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Samsung had said, “OK, we’ll write you a check.”