For those of you who are hoping that the price of the Nexus 7 doesn’t get hiked up by too much once it gets here, there’s some bad news for you. Apparently it infringes on a bunch of Nokia patents. Thankfully, Nokia isn’t taking Apple’s approach to sue their competitors out of existence. Instead, the Finnish company has decided to seek a licensing deal with Google and ASUS.
Licensing patents isn’t anything new, and a number of companies already license Nokia’s patents for their own use, although unfortunately, neither Google nor ASUS are among them. Microsoft has similarly used this approach in the past, and in fact, a small percentage of the profit for every Android handset sold goes to Microsoft for patented technology that Android uses. If a licensing deal does push through, it might drive the price of the Nexus 7 up a little, but given the choice of paying slightly more to get that quad core beast in my hands over not ever being able to see it on Philippine shores, then I’m all for licensing.
Sources: Gizmodo
