Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Tablet maker goes bust after row with retailer over Google services

'MyTablet' maker enters liquidation after Argos withholds £3.2m over lack of GMS license, The Guardian reports

Penryth, Wales-based hardware maker KMS has entered liquidation after a row with high street retailer Argos over use of Google Mobile Services on tablets without the proper license, according to The Guardian. KMS manufactured Argos' £99 "MyTablet" slate, released late last year along with a flurry of other low-priced Android tablets from other UK retailers, as well as other low-end Android tablets.

The newspaper reports that Argos withheld payments of £3.2 million ($5.3 million) from KMS after it discovered the company had loaded Google Mobile Services — the package including Maps, Gmail and the Play Store — onto its tablets without a license from Google. While the core Android OS is free and open-source, Google's proprietary services and apps are not, and manufacturers must obtain a GMS license in order to legally load them onto devices.