Microsoft earnings don’t detail Android’s contribution

Earlier today, Microsoft has announced its earnings which have met investors expectations, at least when it comes to the overall revenues and profits. Some reports have been dramatizing the 6% drop of the Windows business, but it is probably due to the Thailand floods that have slowed down hard disk and other critical PC components, thus slowing the PC market in general.

Interestingly, the Gaming and Servers divisions did very well. It’s not a surprise given that Xbox and Kinect have been top sellers, and despite all the fact that most “cloud” players prefer using LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP), Microsoft continues to grow quickly in the server space.

Now, I wonder how much Microsoft made from those Android royalties that it is getting from HTC, Samsung, Quanta, Compal, ViewSonic, Pantech and many others. While we know that at some point last year those royalties were larger than the Windows Phone business, we don’t know the exact amount. In the grand scheme of things, the Android-related royalties would probably not make that big of a difference for Microsoft, but it should still be a considerable amount in absolute terms.

Hubert Nguyen
Categories: Computers
Tags: business, Microsoft