Thursday, January 30, 2014

Windows 8.1 tablets price reductions

Microsoft slashes prices on Windows 8.1 tablets, achieves near-parity with Android devices | ExtremeTech:

"significant slashes to prices on multiple devices in the Microsoft Store:

32GB Dell Venue Pro has dropped from $299 to $229,

32GB Lenovo Miix 2 and Toshiba Encore (also 32GB tablets) have fallen to $249, from $299."



head-to-head against the $229 Google Nexus 7 (16GB)

Mobile OS %s

Android climbed to 79 percent of smartphone market share in 2013, but its growth has slowed:

Smartphone market share in both Q4 and all of 2013

Google: very expensive patents

Revenue and Profit Rise at Google, but Mobile Is a Persistent Challenge - NYTimes.com:

"Google announced that it would sell Motorola Mobility, which it bought less than two years ago for $12.5 billion, to Lenovo for $2.91 billion."

Google sold Motorola Home, the portion of the business that made set-top boxes, to Arris in 2012 for $2.35 billion. Motorola also had $2.9 billion cash on hand when Google bought it.
“(Google) makes their money from people watching YouTube ads and doing searches...They don’t necessarily need to be the hardware maker.”

Still, Google will retain about 15,000 of the 17,000 patents it acquired as part of its original deal for Motorola, and will grant Lenovo a license to use certain ones.


...last week Lenovo paid $2.3 billion for a big part of the computer server business of IBM.



So, after all, it was $(12.5 - 2.91 - 2.35 - 2.9) =  $ 4.34 B for patents for Android...
That is $ 289 333 for each patent! 

At the same time Microsoft is making $1 B or more per year on licensing its patents to manufacturers of Android, and even considering Nokia phones that run Android... And even Samsung makes huge money on Android powered phones and tablets, and is filing many patents itself...

Patents are big and not quite fair business....