Horace Dediu, an analyst from market intelligence firm Asymco, posted a message on Twitter stating that Microsoft had made three times more money from HTC’s Android-powered smartphones, than it had from mobile devices operating on its own Windows Phone 7 mobile platform.

Microsoft has signed up a handful Android original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of late, providing these with patent-lawsuit protection under its broad patent portfolio in exchange for royalties. These include agreements with General Dynamics Itronix, Velocity Micro, Onkyo, as well as HTC.

During Q2 of 2011, 1.4 million Windows Phone 7-operating smartphones were sold from which Microsoft makes $15 (around R104) per device translating to $21 million (approx. R145.37 million) revenue for the Redmond-based software giant. However, Taiwanese smartphone and tablet maker HTC, managed to sell 12 million smartphones for which Dediu says Microsoft gets $5 (less than R35) per unit. This gives the company a grand total of $60 million (about R415.33 million) from Android and that's only from one Android OEM.  

 

In related news Microsoft and independent business unit of The Attachmate Group, SUSE, have recently announced a four-year extension of the agreement for broad collaboration on Windows and Linux interoperability and support.