I mean that paying off $10 to Microsoft doesn't scale because very soon you'll be paying several others with similarly slightly-relevant patents and who are all already either in court, threatening to take their cases to court, or have a history of not being shy about doing that.
For major players I think it is likely to scale precisely because of the pervasiveness of patents in the area. Those companies with substantial patent portfolios (many of them as you pointed out) gain nothing by suing each other and so most of the time they don't. The case that would indeed be a concern would be if there were a company with no patent portfolio that the others could all pile onto and freeze out. This is possible but it does raise the question of how Apple was able to enter a market with such heavy existing IP holdings. A point worth remembering is that patents don't have to stop you innovating but rather oblige you to redirect your innovation. So if you want to build another 'me too' product there may well be IP issues to navigate but if you do want to truly innovate it is unlikely to be a major concern of the kind you describe with everyone else holding patents in the area.
