The Japanese Sharp has a licentiedeal closed with Microsoft for use of the exFat file system. The successor to the old fat32 system is intended for flash memory and will be used by Sharp in its smartphones.
That means that Microsoft royalties on iron for every smartphone that Sharp sells where exFat is used. The software giant has in the past with various manufacturers of Android hardware similar deals closed over patents; so would five dollars per sold HTC smartphone, go to Microsoft and Samsung would the company even fifteen dollars per device.
ExFat offers several major advantages over the fat32 file system. As there may be with files larger than 4GB to work, and is the maximum disk size later. ExFat is currently used by, among others, Panasonic, Sony and Canon, which also licentiedeals with Microsoft ditches.
In the West, Sharp is not a major player on the smartphone market, but in its home country of Japan, the company has an extensive portfolio. Was also Sharp responsible for the Microsoft Kin phones, which is ultimately a flop appeared.