For the sake of discussion, let’s use $3 per device as our figure. This number is an estimate, but given all information in the market it’s our best guesstimate.

We can now do the math: 860 million Android devices in 2013, of which 65% pay Microsoft a fee, and that fee being $3 leaves Microsoft with $1.677 billion in Android revenue this year. That works out to just over $400 million per quarter, which fits with our earlier statements of Android patent revenue being in the low hundreds of millions.

The Next Web looks at just how much Android is making… for Microsoft.

From my review of the Xperia Z, on Forbes:

Sony has put out a phone that knows exactly what it wants to be. Sony wants to be a player, it wants to be established, and for that it needs to be seen as a stable and worthy manufacturer. The Xperia S proved that Sony could build a good phone, the Xperia T showed an iterative approach and a new found confidence in styling and advertising, and the Xperia Z is a handset that delivers everything you expect, has the style, and gives you the confidence it will not be out of date in six months time.

Which is good, because Sony has run out of model letters at the end of the alphabet.

Google’s blog post on Andy Rubin ‘handing over the reins’ of Android to Sundar Pichai has this doozy:

But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences.

Go on, ask any Android developer how many mobile devices they have to address with the platform to make a great mobile experience. I guess that Pichai’s first task will be to get the number of models to test to drop under the 100 phones mark.

So Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore tweeted with an Android device, to talk about a Windows Phone? Good.

Yes there’s an argument that any public facing executive needs to be 100% on message, but I think it’s far more important that the top-level execs who are imparting the vision and direction on their platform have real world experience of the competing platforms. I would hope that Belfiore is a ‘power’ user on Android, iOS, and BlackBerry 10 (when it arrives) as well as Windows Phone.

I’ve posted up a number of ‘Best of’ lists of apps and games for smartphones around the holidays. All About Windows Phone has five ‘not the A-list‘ games to download (all are free downloads), while Forbes has five recommendations those new to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

Phil Schwarzmann:

I purchased a Google Nexus so I can switch to Straight Talk and give my posterior a break from AT&T’s onslaught. Is this what the general public want in a phone??? I could Hulk Hogan the cheap plastic in half with my bare hands. I’ve had easier time putting on condoms than inserting the Nexus’ flimsy back cover…

And now for the software – Did Google outsource the design of each individual Android screen to a Korean child animator working in silos? There’s zero consistency in the UI. It’s full of buried menus and Windows 95-style icons. The whole thing feels like a dirty apartment, or worse, Symbian. Google and Samsung seriously need to take a page out of Nokia, Microsoft, and Apple’s design playbook.

Will having a working notifications center make up for those issues?

When did a four inch screen make a smartphone mini?

Nokia [have] stepped aside from the ‘specification war’ that Android manufacturers and fans will constant try to engage other platforms in. A spec war that Apple has waded into.

Bing, not Google, to be the search engine for the Kindle Fire tablets. Given Amazon is giving Google an end run on everything (ad revenue, primary sign-in on device, OS branding, app store, etc) it’s only natural they’d turn to another search engine. Still, nice bit of negotiation all round.

Give it six months, and that will probably make Bing the #1 search engine on Android tablets. I’ll be watching Tim Cook very carefully on Wednesday to see which search engine any new iPads will be using…

Most consumers who’ve been tricked into buying Android will either migrate to iPhone or perhaps move to a legitimate third alternative if one ever arises. And that means there’s no battle for the geeks left to fight… their influence on the mainstream, which had been in freefall for a decade, officially ended this week. For the first time in the history of consumer technology, consumers are now fully calling the shots going forward.

Bill Palmer on the consequences of the Apple/Samsung patent case.

It was somewhat telling that both my Lumia 800 and my Galaxy Nexus, both with ’2012′ operating systems and both with limited internal storage (16GB) were somewhat crippled in terms of how I’d normally use their interfaces and functions in the absence of even moderate speed data…  But it was left to my Nokia 808, running the relatively ancient Symbian OS, with its data and battery efficiencies, with its internal 16GB mass memory, plus (in my case) 32GB microSD, to provide me with (sideloaded) movies, music, maps and more on my travels.

All About Windows Phone.

Last night, after several months of rumors and speculation, Samsung finally announced their 2012 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III. It’s a device that I’ve been telling everyone to wait for, telling everyone that it’s going to be the best Android handset to come out this year, telling everyone that buying any other smartphone would be a huge mistake. Now that the Galaxy S III is official, I have to admit that I was wrong, and I’m deeply sorry.

Stefan Constantinescu.

Got to love the alleged view of the UK mobile networks:

 Citing an “extremely reliable” source, [Professeur Thibault] first goes on to address the absence of a Focus S equivalent in Europe which is apparently due to carriers’ unwillingness to stock a device that looks so similar to the Galaxy S II. If there were ever a good incentive to not be lazy with design for Samsung, that would be it…and it really does look to have gotten to them. The source goes on to say the leading OEM is ready to release new models this year for Europe and that, “they should be beautiful”.

My emphasis, via Windows Phone Daily.

Eric Schmidt:

Differentiation means that you have a choice and the people who are making the phones, they’re going to compete on their view of innovation, and they’re going to try and convince you that theirs is better than somebody else… Fragmentation, however, means that you have an app and it runs on one device but not the other

You know, everyone can drive a truck through this argument, but polite society means you could never ask Schmidt the exact question to get an honest answer in an interview

…or maybe they’ve sold eleventy-million and one. That’s the problem when you don’t tell people your sales figures – we’ll start to make them up. Charles Arthur of The Guardian:

And yes, for journalists it is frustrating to be driven to roundabout language such as “believed to be the world’s largest smartphone seller”. I’m far from the only person to have been frustrated by this today; I know directly of two others on different publications who gnashed their teeth over precisely this topic and the misleading tweets from Samsung Mobile SA. If Samsung thinks it’s the world’s largest smartphone seller, then I’d like to at least have it on Samsung’s authority