Microsoft Paid Nokia $250 Million in Q4 2011

We all knew Microsoft threw some sort of cash bonus towards Nokia for utilizing the Windows Phone platform on their latest smartphones. But, until now, we had no concrete numbers to show for the strategic partnership. In Nokia’s fourth quarter report, Nokia revealed that their friends in Redmond paid the “first” (of many more) payments of $250 million. They also revealed that their agreement with Microsoft meant “billions of US Dollars” over the course of the commitment.

This marks the first time we’ve seen one of the major operating system makers hand out cash to manufacturers for their partnership with a certain platform. Google has yet to (officially) provide any financial support for Android manufacturers.

Read the excerpt from Nokia’s reports below:

Our broad strategic agreement with Microsoft includes platform support payments from Microsoft to us as well as software royalty payments from us to Microsoft.  In the fourth quarter 2011, we received the first quarterly platform support payment of USD 250 million (EUR 180 million).  We have a competitive software royalty structure, which includes minimum software royalty commitments. Over the life of the agreement, both the platform support payments and the minimum software royalty commitments are expected to measure in the billions of US Dollars.