Huawei in Line for Microsoft Android Patent Licensing Deal

While there’s no telling who’s first in line to get a new patent licensing agreement with Microsoft, Huawei’s turn sure seems to be coming.

The Chinese-based company confirmed that it started the negotiations with the software giant over an intellectual property agreement designed to cover the use of Google’s Android platform in its devices, according to The Guardian.

Microsoft wants Huawei to pay royalties for the patents that Android is infringing on, just as it did with a number of companies already.

The Redmond company has made it very clear that not only Android, but also Chrome, violates a number of its innovations, although it never made public the exact patent it considers infringed.

Still, this never stopped Microsoft from negotiating a healthy collection of patent licensing agreements with a number of companies, including some of the largest players in the mobile space.

When I asked Microsoft whether it was working on more agreements than those it had already shared with the public, the company confirmed that they were, noting that new deals would be signed and announced by the end of 2011.

Victor Xu, chief marketing officer for Huawei Devices, talked about Huawei’s own patent portfolio as a shield designed to protect it against demands such as those from Microsoft. Huawei own some 65,000 patents worldwide, according to XU.

However, judging from the companies that already inked Android patent deals with Microsoft, IP portfolio might only serve to reduce the royalties amount, but not much more beyond that.

At the end of October 2011, in excess of 50% of all Android devices worldwide were already covered by a patent licensing deal with Microsoft.

Among the companies that inked such agreements with the software giant are Compal Electronics, HTC, Wistron, Quanta Computer, Viewsonic, General Dynamics Itronix, Onkyo, Acer, and Velocity Micro.