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This is amazingly low considering that they have 80% of global market share of an incredibly large and fast growing product that almost everyone in the world will own.

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Samsung (and Google, to a much lesser degree) are the only companies that make any profit on Android. Everyone else loses money on it, even if they have billions in revenue. "Lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume" isn't a viable business strategy, but that's where a lot of companies are at right now.

Microsoft makes ~$2bn/year from it.

How does MS make money from Android? App sales?

By charging IP rents from phone manufacturers.

Patent licensing fees. Microsoft holds a number of patents that they developed or purchased like exFAT and Exchange ActiveSync that are in every Android device made recently.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/06/chinese-govt-reve...

They might have at one point, but I doubt they make close to that number anymore. Samsung was responsible for half of that revenue, but Samsung didn't like the deal they worked out and heavily renegotiated it which is why you see MS software bundled on their devices.

You're not looking at the whole board. There are other companies that make money off of Android. Qualcomm, for instance.

They've made money off of Android by being the dominant SoC provider in the Android ecosystem (could've gone another way in a hypothetical Android-free world) and because Android pushed the smartphone market to grow faster than the alternatives (Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc) would have.

Apples mobile revenue lead has accelerated further ahead of Google's this past year according to App Annie's newest report.

http://photos.appleinsidercdn.com/gallery/15636-12047-Screen...

Only a little bit less than coca cola at $46b, they have very high global market share of a product bought by billions, that almost everyone over 10 have purchased dozens of times.

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