Software giant Oracle has let slip its estimates of the money Google makes from Android during a court case over Java, according to a Bloomberg report.

Scott Bicheno

January 22, 2016

1 Min Read
Oracle reckons Android has made $22 billion profit for Google – report

Software giant Oracle has let slip its estimates of the money Google makes from Android during a court case over Java, according to a Bloomberg report.

According to court transcripts seen by Bloomberg Oracle sought to strengthen its case against Google for using Java (which it acquired along with Sun Microsystems in 2009) to develop Android by revealing Android has generated $31 billion in revenue and $22 billion for Google.

Google doesn’t publicly split out its Android numbers and was apparently not happy that these details had leaked out. They appear to be Oracle estimates but presumably based on some kind of underlying data from Google.

Oracle’s case against Google contends that Java was used to speed up the development of Android and allow it to hit the market at a similar time to the first version of Apple’s iOS. Consequently Oracle thinks it deserves compensation in proportion to the benefit Google has derived from Android, hence the leaked estimates.

Another juicy nugget from the court transcripts uncovered by Bloomberg was that Google apparently paid Apple a billion dollars in 2014 as a result of Google being the default search engine when you search the web via iPhones. This figure was an extrapolation of the piece of the action Apple gets for Google revenue generated through iPhones, which the report indicates may be around a third of the total.

About the Author(s)

Scott Bicheno

As the Editorial Director of Telecoms.com, Scott oversees all editorial activity on the site and also manages the Telecoms.com Intelligence arm, which focuses on analysis and bespoke content.
Scott has been covering the mobile phone and broader technology industries for over ten years. Prior to Telecoms.com Scott was the primary smartphone specialist at industry analyst Strategy Analytics’. Before that Scott was a technology journalist, covering the PC and telecoms sectors from a business perspective.
Follow him @scottbicheno

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