14 DAY TRIAL // The legal dispute between Microsoft and Samsung over unpaid Android patent royalties reveals some pretty interesting figures regarding the money that Redmond makes without actually moving a finger.
Earlier this year, Microsoft decided to sue Samsung for not paying its Android royalties, pointing to a breach of contract that occurred after the Nokia takeover was announced in September 2013.
Microsoft claimed that Samsung actually managed to become the world's number one Android mobile phone manufacturers with the help of its own patents, but now it refuses to pay royalties for the technologies it uses.
While the dispute which was quickly moved to the court, but could be settled anytime soon, didn't provide too many details at first, court documents on the lawsuit now reveal how much money Microsoft is making with its Android patent royalties every year.
Previous reports on the matter suggested that Microsoft makes $2.5 billion (2 billion euro) each year with its patents, and according to lawsuit documents, Samsung is paying almost half of that sum.
$1 billion paid in just one year
According to these court documents, Samsung paid Microsoft no over $1 billion for using its Android patents on devices sold worldwide, including here tablets and smartphones.
At the same time, after the legal dispute between the two companies, Samsung agreed to pay an additional of $6.8 million (5.4 million euro) after holding out on paying royalties since September 2013.
Overall, there's no doubt that Samsung is one of the companies that bring in quite a lot of money for Microsoft, even though the Redmond-based tech giant did nothing more than to file patents for a number of technologies used on Android devices.
Gartner data shows that Samsung sold 299,795,000 smartphones and 37,411,921 tablets running Android last year, so it's pretty clear where all the money come from.
More than $3 (2.4 euro) for every sold device
While there's no doubt that $1 billion (800,000 euro) per year is quite a lot of Android patents, Microsoft takes a few bucks for every device sold by Samsung and running Google's mobile operating system.
Brad Sams of Neowin did the math and obtained an average price of $3.21 (2.56 euro) per device, which even though might not be perfectly accurate, still gives us a glimpse into how much money Microsoft actually makes with its patents.
Of course, Microsoft will never disclose these figures, but there's no doubt that filing patents for the Android technologies that most of the manufacturers are using these days was a very, very smart decision of the Redmond-based tech giant.