I know I've brought this up before, but I don't think I've ever gotten a definitive, "here's the link", type of answer. I might be wrong, but my memory isn''t great with retaining that kind of info, so I apologize if this HAS been answered, but why does everyone think that Sony got a sweetheart deal.

If you consider that Sony, Pentax, Seiko-Epson & Nikon pulled in $25.75M as we know, and then look at what had been paid prior to that we see that there were only 5 licensees prior to Sony. They were AMD, Intel, HP, Fujitsu & Casio. Combining their annual revenues ($183.1B) and dividing by their total combined license fees paid ($83.05) gives a ratio of $1 in license fee for every $2205 in revenue earned.

If you apply that ratio to the following companies and their associated annual revenues, it give us:

Nikon - $6.66B anl rev x 1/2205 = $3.02M license fee

Seiko Epson - $12.319B anl rev x 1/2205 = $5.59M license fee

Pentax - $0.7B anl rev x 1/2205 = $0.32M license fee.

Using those ratios which were in line with the early mover discounts at that time, would leave $16.82M of the $25.75M in license fees to have come from Sony. Using Sony's annual revenues of $43.6B, they WOULD have been in line to pay $19.79M. So while based on that analysis, it does appear they paid less than expected ($2.97M less), it doesn't seem to be THAT BIG of a discount.

Am I missing something in this analysis or has a number been publicized as to what Sony actually paid? I recall someone saying Sony only paid $1M, which if that's the case, would cause me great concern, but if that's a guess and not substaniated fact, a basic review doesn't show Sony paying anything terribly out of wack, IMO. In fact, at $16.82M paid based on $43.6B in revenues, the ratio is $1/$2592, and that's not far off from the historical average through this last 10q ($1/$2346), so arguably, Sony didn't get much of a discount.