Microsoft’s Android patent deal grows steadily, Compal joins the gang

We’ve been following Microsoft’s patent license agreements with various technology companies and it looks like Compal is the newest member of the group. Compal is one of the world’s largest Original Design Manufacturers (ODM) based out of Taiwan and are responsible for producing tablets and smartphones for third parties. Their revenue is estimated at roughly $28 billion per year which makes it a very good acquisition for Microsoft. This announcement makes Compal the ninth Android acquisition in the last four months. But more importantly, more than half of all mobile and tablet companies have now entered into a patent agreement with Microsoft, even if they didn’t want to.

Rapidly expanding their reach

According to the chart above, the green arrows indicate all the companies Microsoft already has a patent agreement with while the red line shows the recent lawsuits. Other than Compal, Microsoft has also struck licence agreements with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) like HTC, Acer, Samsung and many others which account for a total of 53 percent of all Android smartphones in the US alone. With all these patents in place, the software giant is profiting from all the Android sales so even though Windows Phone 7 hasn’t been able to take over the market share of Android and iOS, Microsoft doesn’t seem to be worried much and now we know why.