Quanta to pay Microsoft royalties for Android products

Microsoft has been rather aggressive lately in their attempt to license some of their patents to Android manufacturers, such as HTC and Samsung, and recently they have managed to land a rather big fish in the form of Quanta, who is the hardware manufacturer for other companies to sell under their own brand, such as Amazon’s recent Kindle Fire and RIM’s Blackberry Playbook.

As usual no figures were disclosed in this deal, but Microsoft has acknowledged that the hardware manufacturer will be paying them royalties, and the details of the deal are a bit murky at the moment. However if you are thinking it might be unfair that Microsoft could approach Amazon for similar royalties, it seems that the Redmond company has in place “provisions that make sure we are not paid twice for the same device”, which seems to suggest that Quanta’s royalties will suffice.

However we know that Amazon has more than one tablet in mind, so it will be interesting to see if this licensing deal will be a blanket license for all future Quanta Android products, or if it only covers specific devices, in this case the Kindle Fire Android tablet.