Windows Phone 7 has yet to really take off, with a rather lacklustre range of handsets and a not-quite-there-yet OS. That might be set to change, however, with the arrival of Nokia and Mango later in the year.
But in the meantime, Microsoft continues to rake in more from HTC than it does from its own Windows Phone 7 licenses.
Microsoft settled a patent dispute with HTC a while back, meaning the Taiwanese manufacturer must pay Ballmer & Crew $5 for every Android handset sold. WP7 licenses, meanwhile, go for $15 each.
Asymco’s Horace Dediu has crunched some Q2 numbers, and points out that 1.4 million Windows Phone 7 licenses at $15 makes $21 million, while 12 million HTC units at $5 yields $60 million.
I’d suggest that those figures might leave Ballmer slightly red-faced, but, y’know, $60 million. That’s not a bad bonus for doing, well, nothing.
Ironically, HTC was one the few manufacturers to jump on board with Microsoft’s latest OS, and currently accounts for more than half of the WP7 handsets available in the UK.
via: Twitter
