Apple’s iPhone Makes More Money for Google Than Its Android Phones

The Guardian details how Google makes more money from the iPhone rather than its own Android smartphones, as revealed by data provided to Oracle from Google in their patent and copyright infringement trial:

Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, if figures provided by the search giant as part of a settlement offer with Oracle ahead of an expected patent and copyright infringement trial are an accurate guide.

The figures also suggest that Apple devices such as the iPhone, which use products such as its Maps as well as Google Search in its Safari browser, generated more than four times as much revenue for Google as its own handsets in the same period.

After Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems and their patents, they sued Google in 2010 and claimed Android infringes on Sun patents and copyright in Java. The Guardian showed based their calculations on the numbers of Google’s proposed settlement to Oracle:

In a pre-trial settlement offer, Google proposed that it would pay Oracle a percentage of revenues from Android, suggesting it would pay $2.8m in damages on the two remaining patents that Oracle is asserting for the period to 2011, and then 0.5% of ongoing Android revenue on one patent which expires this December, and 0.015% on another which expires in April 2018.

Google offers Android to OEMs to use for free, and generates revenue from ads and a percentage of app sales. Even with all of this combined, Apple’s use of Google as the default search engine in mobile Safari and Google Maps appears to make more money from Android handsets. Gee, what would Steve say?