

Microsoft’s Ballmer: Android Isn’t Really Free — You Have To Pay Us For Patents - davidedicillo
http://techcrunch.com/2010/10/03/android-isnt-free/

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devmonk
"Where has Microsoft been the past couple of years with these suits? I’ll tell
you where: waiting to spring this on OEMs when they had their own device out
there that they need to gain traction against Android."

The author had me until this. Whenever someone tells me "I'll tell you why..."
in that tone, it is usually because they are angry, and anger is usually not
the best ingredient for clear thinking.

First off, Microsoft has been floundering around in the mobile space, because:

1 - Windows Mobile was just a disabled version of Windows, just like J2ME was
a disabled version of Java. It was a whole new environment. They should have
developed Win Mobile from scratch.

2 - Windows Mobile is no iOS. iOS was adopted by users because of the great
hardware and software design. Win Mobile- design stuck in the early 2000s.

3 - Android was well adopted because (a) it was Google and (b) it was free.
And oh yeah, it is pretty good, even if not as snazzy as iOS all of the time.
So far Windows Mobile, not so much.

MS had a number of opportunities to position itself as a "real OS" running on
a mobile device and do something with that possibly, but it didn't.

So MS screwed up and has now decided to go on the attack to divert attention
from the recent press on Ballmer losing his bonus because of Win Mobile, as
well as Win Mobile being a failure in the news.

MS also probably smelt blood with the Oracle suit and Wifi spying and figured
Google's lawyers and PR were as weak as they might get anytime soon. Also they
don't come off as the bad guys like Oracle, and their suit probably gains more
legitimacy when there are other high profile suits.

But seriously, were they waiting on this opportunity like hungry wolves _to
gain traction on Android_? No, Win Mobile is nowhere near Android, so it
wouldn't make sense to take a slash at them to try to gain on Android. It
would just mean Apple would get more sales. They want to take down _Google_.

Despite all of this, MS is still worth watching. Even though they shouldn't
try to head to head with Google so much, and they'd do better by focusing
efforts on new products and markets and pretending Google and Apple didn't
exist, they aren't going away anytime soon.

