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.

$299, and my workings are on Forbes.

Food for thought from David Barnard on App Cubby around the pricing of mobile apps and the race to zero for purchase price on apps, even with the big-ticket apps and games available for the mobile platforms. But Barnard goes beyond the problems for developers, and suggests this is  what Apple intended:

…Apple’s policies and the design of the App Store itself initiated and even accelerated the race to the bottom. It’s clear to me in hindsight that this was either Apple’s intent, or at least something they didn’t actively discourage. To Apple, apps are merely complements to their highly profitable hardware sales.

Where other companies , such as Amazon with the Kindle Fire and console makes like Sony with the soon to arrive PS Vita in Europe and US, rely on additional sales to make up their profit, that’s not the Apple way. The majority of profit is in the handset, and the temptation to buy it is in app ecosystem where you can load up on thirty apps for $20 after your purchase.

I was told that one promoter has spent £36,000 on Edinburgh Fringe posters for a particular act.

Some of my thoughts on the cost of the Fringe over at Dale & Co:

If you repeat a lie often enough, then people will start to believe it. Keep repeating it after that, and it becomes something that is accepted. And shortly after that, it becomes faith. So let me skewer one of the big myths of the Fringe. It does not cost thousands of pounds to put on a show at the Edinburgh Fringe.  Like any endeavour, it is possible to spend tens of thousands of pounds so that you can stand in front of a few hundred people each night in August, with a single microphone, telling humorous stories. Just because it is possible, doesn’t make it the only way to do the Fringe.

The reported cost? $25,000 a month, with a three month minimum commitment. How’s the return on that going to be measured?

I hesitate to pass judgment on the advertising’s effectiveness because Patch is clearly still ironing out the wrinkles and my experience is recent and brief. The first salesperson I dealt with oversold the site, claiming five times the unique visitors it actually has, according to stats shown to me by the supervisor who fired her.

it’s a ridiculously expensive ad buy at about $100 versus $30 or so for a parallel Google Adwords campaign. The metrics have been abysmal and, after a short run in the middle of the summer doldrums, no inquiries. But I’m hopeful they’ll figure it out

Let’s get the maths straight here…

3G iphone, 8gb… $199
Plus…
Data plan: $30/month (up from $10 a month)
Voice plan: $39/month
…and that’s every month…
($30 + $39) x 24 = $1656

Total iPhone 3G price: $1855

More at Mobile Messaging 2.0…