A 1 BILLION DOLLAR JUDGEMENT in APPLES FAVOR so far kind of puts the lie to your suppositions.
You think SAMSUNG is the only player who’s going to have to pay up to Apple?
I am no Apple Fan Boy, but Apple developed and patented much of what is now considered common in the touchscreen arena, gesture interactions etc... NOT MOTOROLA. Google partners will continue to lose law suits because they are infringing on those Patents, pure and simple.
What this means in the longer haul is that Microsoft if they could get a decent phone out in the market and get it to sell could take advantage.. I am sure they were wise enough NOT to blatantly break patents in their OS.
The fact APPLE is going after manufacturers and not Google directly tells you their strategy, and that strategy is NOT to get licensing agreements, but to let manufacturers know, you build an android device, you are going to be sued and lose big time. If Apple just wanted money they would have sued Google directly, or negotiated licensing deals with them... instead they are pushing manufacturers away from Google or trying to anyway, which would be an opening for MS to step into the fray in a meaningful way....
Time will tell.
Microsoft had indeed already licensed the relevant patents that Samsung was found to have infringed upon.
Apple’s win against Samsung was against specific developments unique to Samsung that demonstrated they were copying Apple’s hardware and UI in Samsung specific ways, not general Android issues. Apple is trying to make it look like a bigger win in their PR campaign, but this was not a win against Android. Now that they’ve won this case, they’re broadening to Android specific UI features, but they haven’t won that yet. Apparently Apple thinks they were they first to come up with slide to unlock.