stephanie8bb: Making Fast Money

Google last year said Android is a $1 billion business. Microsoft, it seems, may have similar plans for Google’s mobile operating system. Thanks to a barrage of patent licensing agreements with Android manufacturers, including a potentially highly lucrative deal in the works with Samsung, Microsoft is on its way to making big money with Android. How much could it all be worth?

Well, with 500,000 daily Android activations that Google recently reported, Microsoft could make $912 million in a year if it extracts $5 per activation on every Android smartphone or tablet sold. That’s how much it reportedly makes on each HTC Android device, as part of a licensing deal struck last year. It’s a long way to getting all Android makers to pony up, but you can see how big an opportunity this is for Microsoft, which is studiously lining up licensing deals with Android manufacturers. There are some 36 Android licensees as of May, making some 310 devices.

The latest and potentially biggest deal is reportedly in the works with Samsung, the world’s leading Android manufacturer in terms of sales. Microsoft is leaning on Samsung to sign a patent licensing deal that could pay Microsoft $15 for every Android device, although Samsung is reportedly trying to bring that down to $10. At that price, Microsoft could make an estimated $200 million alone just on Samsung Galaxy S II smartphones this year based on projections of 20 million sales. And if Android activations pick up speed, which is likely considering the pace of Android’s growth, it could mean an even larger opportunity of more than $1 billion annually for Microsoft.

Again, it’s no guarantee that Microsoft can strike licensing deals with every Android manufacturer but the Windows giant has been on a roll lately. It has recently signed deals with General Dynamics Itronix, Wistron Corp., Velocity Micro and Okyo Corp. Microsoft has not disclosed how much those deals are worth, though it said it was collecting royalty payments from the licensees. Many firms choosing to strike deals, including companies like Itronix, which presumably has some General Dynamics patents to cross license, suggests Microsoft has a pretty compelling argument that may work on other manufacturers.

Microsoft hasn’t won over everyone, however. Motorola has been a hold-out, as has Barnes & Noble. Both are fighting Microsoft in court over patent infringement claims. A win by either could help slow down Microsoft’s patent rampage on Android. But it could be some time before those cases are decided. In the meantime, if Microsoft can add Samsung to the list of licensees of patents allegedly infringed upon by use of the Android operating system, it could be a signal to other manufacturers that it might make sense to fall in line.

There’s something a little perverse about imagining Microsoft making so much from another operating system when it can’t seem to get much traction for its own mobile efforts. Gartner estimated Microsoft sold just 1.6 million Windows Phone 7 devices in the first quarter. It’s almost certain then that Microsoft made a lot more money from its deal with HTC, which sold 9.3 million phones in the first quarter, most of them Androids.

But it’s a sad fact of life in the fast-moving world of technology. Companies that aren’t necessarily competitive can still rake in dollars with their intellectual property. Nortel just sold its patents to a consortium including Microsoft, RIM and Apple for $4.5 billion, leaving Google without some significant patent protection. Google has decried the state of software patents but bid unsuccessfully on the Nortel portfolio to bulk up its defenses. But with Microsoft coming after its Android partners, Google doesn’t have much to say it seems. It may be that Microsoft’s patent licenses become just a cost of doing business for Android OEMs. I don’t think it will derail Android’s overall momentum, but it does undermine the promise of the platform as a free operating system. And it could lead to less innovation and added costs eventually passed on to consumers.

At any rate, Android is still a world beater for now though increasingly a huge lawsuit magnet. Google is still making its $1 billion from advertising on Android. Manufacturers like HTC are seeing record profits by feeding off of Android’s success. It seems like Microsoft is making sure that even if its own platform is starting slowly, it’s getting a sizable piece of the Android action.

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Tableau's goal is that anyone who cares about data should be able to work with it. But often there has already been a lot of work done on the data from so-called "Data Journalists" - who have been adopting Tableau's software with glee. There is a term for this type of reporting: Computer Assisted Reporting (CAR). CAR has been around for a while, but Tableau makes the process faster and saves journalists from doing custom programming. According to Tableau's Ellie Fields, "fast authoring has been a big driver of uptake" among data journalists.

Tableau has a range of products, including the premium Tableau Digital (used by the aforementioned media companies) to the free Tableau Public (aimed at bloggers). The free version has size restrictions and the data has to be shared to the cloud for anyone to use. The premium versions allow you to keep your data private if needed. There's also a corporate product called Tableau Server, which sits inside the firewall.

So far Tableau claims to have published 10,000 visualizations.

When you think pretty data on the Web these days, the iPad is usually front of mind. Tableau is currently developing an iPad app, which is expected to be released this month for corporates. A public version of the iPad app will be released in future, but no timeframe has been given yet. The iPad app will allow for touch screen scrolling through of data, pinch down, and more.

Mobile is a big area for data visualizations, Ellie Fields told me. "People are making decisions when out and about, not at their desks."

I asked whether there will be a destination site for data visualizations, where consumers can come to browse different visualizations. However that is not on the company's roadmap, Fields replied. "We are not trying to drive traffic from publishers."

Tableau is one of the most visible (pun intended) companies on the Web, graphically packaging up and analyzing the ever increasing amount of data on the Internet. That trend will continue to ramp up, so keep your eyes peeled for more and more data visualizations in your online media experience.

Disclosure: ReadWriteWeb partnered with Tableau last year for a graphing contest.

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Friday, July 29, 2011

Making Fast Money

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