14 DAY TRIAL // This year, Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia will receive from Microsoft more money in the form of platform support payments for the development of Windows Phone devices – just as announced about two years ago – than it will pay in the form of royalties for using the OS, it seems.
Today, the company announced the filing of its annual report on Form 20-F for 2012, and made the above assertion in this document.
As part of this report, the company shared to the world some more info on the deal it signed with Microsoft in 2011 when it announced its intent to adopt the Windows Phone platform, and the above piece of information is part of this filing.
“In 2013 the amount of the platform support payments from Microsoft to Nokia is still expected to slightly exceed the total amount of the minimum software royalty commitment payments from Nokia to Microsoft,” the company announced.
However, things will be different in the long run, as Nokia is expected to pay more money to the Redmond-based software giant in the form of royalties for the mobile operating system than it would receive as support for joining the Windows Phone party.
“The remaining minimum software royalty commitment payments from Nokia to Microsoft are expected to exceed the remaining platform support payments from Microsoft to Nokia by a total of approximately EUR 0.5 billion over the remaining life of the agreement,” the company announced.
Unfortunately, although they might not seem new to some people out there, these are the only details that Nokia has shared on the matter for the time being.
Back in 2011, Nokia announced a radical shift in strategy with the adoption of Windows Phone, as the move also sentenced its Symbian and MeeGo devices to death.
Following a rather slow start, Nokia’s WP handsets, the Lumia series, have started to pick up Steam, and the latest quarterly results from the company confirmed that.
However, both the OS and Nokia’s lineup are far from posing a real threat to Google’s Android OS, Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy lineup, and it might take a while before they will be able to prove challenging to them.