The Macalope

The other day over at Macworld the Macalope alluded to how the fine folks at Microsoft’s legal department might be giddy at the thought of raking in some cash from the new Kindle Fire. They’ve got a lot to be giddy about lately as they landed themselves a big fish this week: Samsung.

Microsoft announced today that it has signed a definitive agreement with Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., to cross-license the patent portfolios of both companies, providing broad coverage for each company’s products. Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will receive royalties for Samsung’s mobile phones and tablets running the Android mobile platform.

Florian Mueller points out the relationship problems between OEMs and Android.

By taking a royalty-bearing license, Samsung recognizes that Android has intellectual property problems that must be resolved with license fees, and reduces to absurdity the idea that Google is going to be able to protect Android after the acquisition of Motorola Mobility.

“This relationship comes with more baggage than I bargained for!” Now it seems Samsung is telling Google “I think we should see other people.”

Tizen is apparently the combination of MeeGo and LiMo — neither of which have any serious adoption — that I wrote about earlier. It looks like an Intel- and Samsung-led rival to Android — which is selling well, but has patent issues, and is increasingly under Google’s control.

It’s an uphill battle against Android and iOS at this point but, hey, good luck, Tizen.

Consumers and developers will need reasons to support Tizen, too, which will be a struggle. But it’s probably worth trying, even if just to show Google that it has competition.

The Macalope’s not sure Tizen is necessarily the ticket, but he suspects that the devotion of the Android community to its platform is ankle-deep compared to the iPhone and iPad, so it might be worth a try.

The problem, however, is not so much the platform as it is the ecosystem. This is why the Macalope thinks that Amazon possibly buying webOS from HP could be a great idea. Amazon already has the infrastructure and the media to make a platform successful. Yes, the breadth of apps will be less than what’s available on its App Store for Android, but does Amazon really want to get into a licensing deal with Microsoft? That’s where every other “Android” (quotes because Amazon’s fork of Android can’t technically be called “Android” because Google owns the trademark) OEM has ended up.

What do you want to be when you grow up, Amazon?