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| Huawei MediaPad |
The Blaze, for example, runs Android 2.3 on a 3.2in screen (curved). Huawei has a decent patent portfolio in infrastructure, and has cross licensing deals with all the important players – Nokia Siemens, Qualcomm, Ericsson et al, but in handsets it needs to tread carefully. Huawei is well aware that Chinese companies have something of a reputation regarding patent rights, so talking to Microsoft makes sense.
In reality, there's very little remarkable about the Huawei MediaPad, which is intriguing for a relatively unknown manufacturer that's looking to make waves in the ultra-competitive UK market. It's running stock Android Honeycomb, bringing nothing in the way of a unique selling point for a tablet. The only thing that really shows it's a Huawei device is the addition of Huawei Office, which allows compatibility with PDF, Word and Excel documents. Overall though, we're not sure the Huawei MediaPad is going to set the UK tablet market alight. Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) is could be adding one more OEM to its list of Android licensees, and this one is a biggie: Huawei, the ambitious Chinese OEM that is rapidly gaining market share on the back of producing low-cost Android-based devices.
The development raises questions about whether Android phone makers competing on low prices will need to rethink their business models—and whether we might be seeing Huawei joining the ranks of handset makers also making Windows Phone devices.--The Huawei deal is still being negotiated, according to Victor Xu, director of marketing for Huawei Devices, who confirmed as much to the Guardian. When the deal is completed, Huawei would become the eleventh OEM that builds Android devices to sign deals with Microsoft. The list includes both those who only make Android devices, as well as those who also develop handsets based on Microsoft’s own Windows Phone OS, the two biggest being Samsung and HTC.
Separately, the Openwave deal makes Microsoft the first licensee for Openwave’s 200 patents, which the company says relate to smart devices and cloud-based technologies. Microsoft’s deal with Huawei raises a couple of interesting questions about what we might see next from the Chinese handset maker: WP7 devices? Most recently, Microsoft’s licensing deal with Samsung for Android devices also included detail of broad support for WP7. So far, Huawei has said that it is watching WP7 with interest, but it has yet to announce any devices using the OS. Farewell, cheap Android devices? The Chinese telecoms giant Huawei has confirmed that Microsoft is demanding royalty payments from it over products using Android software.
Victor Xu, chief marketing officer for Huawei Devices, confirmed to the Guardian on Monday evening that "negotiations are in progress" over licensing certain Microsoft patents which the American software giant claims are infringed by hardware implementations of Android.
"Yes, Microsoft has come to us," Xu said on Monday as the company launched a new smartphone and 7in tablet for the UK market. We are a very important stakeholder in Android." Microsoft has already extracted per-device royalty agreements for Android products from at least 10 companies, including Samsung, the world's largest smartphone maker, HTC, Compal Electronics (whose customers include Dell, HP and Toshiba), Quanta Computer, Wistron, General Dynamics Itronix, Velocity Micro, Onkyo, Acer, and Viewsonic. In a blogpost in October Microsoft's Brad Smith said that the licence agreement with Compal meant that "companies accounting for more than half of all Android devices have now entered into patent licence agreements with Microsoft". The Shenzhen-based company is the world's second-biggest maker of networking infrastructure such for mobile phone networks, behind Sweden's Ericsson and ahead of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia Siemens Networks.
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