I've been wondering recently about 'naked' handsets. It's possible to buy 'naked' PCs, which come without an operating system pre-installed. This is cool because it means as a customer you should (in theory) be able to avoid paying that little bit extra for the Windows licensing. In the case of Android smartphones / tablets, that shouldn't be an issue - because manufacturers don't have to pay Google licensing fees. So you might think there would never be demand among Android users for naked smartphones.
However, as we've seen in recent patent disputes, manufacturers are now having to pay royalties to the likes of Microsoft and Oracle for each Android handset they sell. Perhaps one way that we as android users could get around this would be if manufacturers began selling popular handsets without Android pre-installed, thus avoiding the patent royalties. Then customers could install their favourite Android distro themselves. What do people think? Not being a technical expert, I'm not sure whether this would be feasible. Would it be hard to do? Would it require too much effort on the part of the manufacturers for too small a segment of customers?
However, as we've seen in recent patent disputes, manufacturers are now having to pay royalties to the likes of Microsoft and Oracle for each Android handset they sell. Perhaps one way that we as android users could get around this would be if manufacturers began selling popular handsets without Android pre-installed, thus avoiding the patent royalties. Then customers could install their favourite Android distro themselves. What do people think? Not being a technical expert, I'm not sure whether this would be feasible. Would it be hard to do? Would it require too much effort on the part of the manufacturers for too small a segment of customers?
