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by scarface74 2539 days ago
From what I can tell, OEMs didn’t have to pay for Google apps or Google Play Services but they had to place Google apps prominently and had to have Google search as the default search engine. It was also an all or nothing thing.

That changed recently because of an EU consent decree. At least in the EU. Now OEMs have to pay up to $40 per device.

1 comments

The Oracle lawsuit exposed Android revenue numbers. OEMs definitely have been paying for quite some time now.
Those numbers could have well come from advertising and Google Play. I couldn’t find anything about OEMs paying to license Google apps before the EU consent decree.
Advertising was in a separate bucket and Google Pay numbers were approximately known. It worked out to about $10/phone.