Microsoft’s WinMo revenue model is being challenged. HTC, the manufacturer shipping most WinMo handsets has been the first manufacturer to ship an Android handset. Given that Android comes at zero royalty, this gives HTC an unprecedented bargaining power towards its supplier, Microsoft, whose circa 6 USD unit royalty has to certainly come down considerably.

Symbian Foundation does claim zero royalty, but in effect the OEMs shipping handsets will have to support the sub-500 (official figures) employees of the Symbian Foundation, so expect effective annual fees per OEM to be in the order of several million per year. For an OEM shipping 5 million handsets per year on Symbian, this represents a circa 1 dollar per unit royalty. Now I don’t think HTC will do Symbian Foundation handsets, simply because it takes 2-3 years to develop the know-how to produce Symbian-based handsets to compete with LG or Samsung (let alone Nokia).

Overall, Microsoft Windows Mobile will be highly pressured to drop its per-unit royalties and open more of its codebase to OEM scrutiny and modification.

-Andreas

You post was eaten by the voracious spam filter, hence the long time to reply.

Opera, Access have their own problems to deal with, and I expect them to go open source in the near term. Price-wise they have been living in the browsers-are-free market perception for more than a year.

Overall, the diminishing of per-unit royalty fees is impacting less the mid-range and certainly not the low range phones (see post on PurpleLabs and Openwave).

ENEA’s OSE already has a problem of adding value above the kernel, and so its shelf life in its current form is limited.

In general I see royalties giving way to NREs for stack integration, customisation and certification, as well as tools and where possible per-user/usage fees. (see related post on Value Quadrants).

- Andreas

The iPhone is a closed ecosystem, i.e. OSX is not licensable to third parties. I would compare iPhone+OSX+iTunes+SDK with Windows Mobile + Danger, where both are vertically bound ecosystems.

LiMo, Android and Symbian Foundation don’t come with mandated hardware and are more horizontal.

Interestingly, a mid-point in the spectrum is Qualcomm’s BREW.

Andreas

Agreed that this is true for licensable software, but what about iPhone? Interested to hear your thoughts on this, Andreas.

Posted Jun 24 2008, 02:51 AM byAndroid Aggregated News Alerts

about Less than 1% 3G traffic from smartphonesDean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis about HSDPA on the fringes of coverageDean Bubley at Disruptive Analysis about Received party pays for mobile in Europe?Andreas Constantinou atVisionMobileabout Nokia and Symbian to become one; royalty-free, open source roadmapStuart CarlawABI Research about Nokia to Acquire Symbian and Go OpenJérémie Bouchaud at iSuppli about The Birth of a Mobile-Handset Powerhouse

Vision Mobile – Nokia & Symbian to become one

s daughters will be in the Blyk target age range next year so he has a personal interest in keeping the family call costs down. Vanessa Measom reports from VisionMobile, where Research Director Andreas Constantinoudistils the ramifications of the Symbian Foundation announcement as Nokia celebrates Symbian’s 10 year anniversary with their acquisition and a royalty-free, open source roadmap for S60. Kurt Pankau is still ROFTL (Rolling On the Floor Laughing) about how