Microsoft paid Nokia $250 million to use Windows Phone
Nokia just posted its hugely anticipated Holiday quarter results and summed up its financials for 2011. Not surprisingly, the company posted a huge loss of nearly $1.4 billion (1.07 billion euro), but what’s even more interesting - Nokia is getting paid by Microsoft to make Windows Phones.
Nokia received a $250 million “platform support payment” from Microsoft, just because it is making Windows Phone devices. Nokia also notes that this is the first from a series of payments from Redmond, but it seems that Microsoft has to up that sum to make up for Nokia’s huge loss.
Previously, Nokia’s CEO and ex-Microsoftite Stephen Elop, said that the Finns are to get billions, not millions in support funds from Microsoft.
“Our broad strategic agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft” Nokia said. ”We have a competitive software royalty structure, which includes minimum software royalty commitments.”
This hints that additionally the Finns might be paying less for royalties than other Windows Phone makers, which could turn out to be a very irritating discovery for other WP handset makers. Nokia has shipped "well over 1 million" Windows Phone devices up to date, but it stayed mum on sales of its other high-end platform MeeGo.
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