Quanta Computer Inc (廣達), the world’s largest contract notebook PC maker, has signed a patent licensing agreement with Microsoft Corp, in which it would pay royalties to the software giant when it produces tablets, smartphones or other consumer devices running Android or Chrome platforms.
Microsoft made the announcement on Friday in a statement, without revealing the licensing fee.
That means Quanta is following in the footsteps of other Taiwanese hardware makers, such as HTC Corp (宏達電), Wistron Corp (緯創) and Acer Inc (宏碁), South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co and the US’ ViewSonic and Velocity Micro Inc, as well as Japan’s Onkyo Corp, in paying royalties to Microsoft to use the two open platforms developed by Google Inc.
According to the Chinese-language Commercial Times, Quanta is the contract maker of the PlayBook from Research In Motion Ltd and the Kindle Fire from Amazon, and has to pay royalties for both.
The paper cited industry estimates that Microsoft will make between NT$500 million (US$16.5 million) and NT$1 billion in royalties from Quanta this year based on the expected combined shipments of 6 million units of the PlayBook and Kindle Fire.
The calculation was derived from HTC’s reportedly paying between US$2 and US$5 per Android smartphone to Microsoft, the paper said.
Since Microsoft launched its intellectual property (IP) licensing program in December 2003, the company has inked more than 700 licensing agreements.
“We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Quanta, and proud of the continued success of our Android licensing program in resolving IP issues -surrounding Android and Chrome devices in the marketplace,” Microsoft Intellectual Property Group vice president and deputy general counsel Horacio Gutierrez said in the statement.
HTC, the world’s No. 5 smartphone brand, in April last year said it would pay Microsoft to license a series of patents that cover technology in HTC cellphones that use Google’s popular Android operating system.
Microsoft has declined to say which of its patents are relevant to Android and Chrome.
According to IDG News, some analysts have speculated that Microsoft is potentially earning more revenue through licensing to Android smartphone makers than it is through licensing its Windows Phone operating system.
That is because IDG projected Android to have a 39.5 percent of the smartphone operating system market share this year, compared with 5.5 percent for Windows Phone.
Microsoft, which says that Android infringes its patents, is suing Motorola Mobility and Barnes & Noble, the maker of Nook e--readers, on the IP violation issue.
UNCERTAINTIES: Exports surged 34.1% and private investment grew 7.03% to outpace expectations in the first half, although US tariffs could stall momentum The Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) yesterday raised its GDP growth forecast to 3.05 percent this year on a robust first-half performance, but warned that US tariff threats and external uncertainty could stall momentum in the second half of the year. “The first half proved exceptionally strong, allowing room for optimism,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said. “But the growth momentum may slow moving forward due to US tariffs.” The tariff threat poses definite downside risks, although the scale of the impact remains unclear given the unpredictability of US President Donald Trump’s policies, Lien said. Despite the headwinds, Taiwan is likely
When Lika Megreladze was a child, life in her native western Georgian region of Guria revolved around tea. Her mother worked for decades as a scientist at the Soviet Union’s Institute of Tea and Subtropical Crops in the village of Anaseuli, Georgia, perfecting cultivation methods for a Georgian tea industry that supplied the bulk of the vast communist state’s brews. “When I was a child, this was only my mum’s workplace. Only later I realized that it was something big,” she said. Now, the institute lies abandoned. Yellowed papers are strewn around its decaying corridors, and a statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin
READY TO BUY: Shortly after Nvidia announced the approval, Chinese firms scrambled to order the H20 GPUs, which the company must send to the US government for approval Nvidia Corp chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) late on Monday said the technology giant has won approval from US President Donald Trump’s administration to sell its advanced H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) used to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to China. The news came in a company blog post late on Monday and Huang also spoke about the coup on China’s state-run China Global Television Network in remarks shown on X. “The US government has assured Nvidia that licenses will be granted, and Nvidia hopes to start deliveries soon,” the post said. “Today, I’m announcing that the US government has approved for us
UNIFYING OPPOSITION: Numerous companies have registered complaints over the potential levies, bringing together rival automakers in voicing their reservations US President Donald Trump is readying plans for industry-specific tariffs to kick in alongside his country-by-country duties in two weeks, ramping up his push to reshape the US’ standing in the global trading system by penalizing purchases from abroad. Administration officials could release details of Trump’s planned 50 percent duty on copper in the days before they are set to take effect on Friday next week, a person familiar with the matter said. That is the same date Trump’s “reciprocal” levies on products from more than 100 nations are slated to begin. Trump on Tuesday said that he is likely to impose tariffs