News last week that a consortium of companies - among them Apple and Microsoft - outbid Google for a number of Nortel patents related to the smartphone industry.

We can talk about business models all we want (subscriptions, microtransactions, virtual goods, transactional payments, advertising, etc.), but it appears that the new business model for wireless players is patent litigation. This is related to yesterday's Fierce Wireless article about Microsoft wanting $15 from Samsung for every Android phone it sells.