Samsung is sole supplier of Apple's iPad Retina displays - report - Page 4

Although this is not accurate, it does highlight the interesting relationship between the two companies. One relies on the other for critical components. The other relies on the first for design *inspiration*. They are seriously co-dependent but their lawyers meet regularly in court. It sounds like a couple fighting like cat and dog in divorce court, and continue to have regular sex at home.

I'll see your fansite and raise you an encyclopedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung...ajor_customers

No, you said: "Samsung has many phones and tablets that just use Samsung parts". So again, since when did Wacom or Qualcomm become divisions of Samsung?

Most Samsung's phones / tablets don't have Wacom digitizers (bar Samsung's Galaxy Notes). If I recall correctly, only the US edition of Galaxy lines uses Qualcomm chips; all others use in-house Exynos chips. Now, considering Samsung sold 100+M smartphones last year, it's fair to say Samsung has many phones (/tablet - probably insignificant given that Samsung's share of tablet sales is neglible) whose *major components* are made in-house.

Not really.. I see Apple going the way of Motorola or Nokia. Apple owns none of the underlying technology behind iPhones or iPad. Samsung not only makes major components for Apple (oh and widely licensed essential IPs), but it also has already more or less commodified smartphones. To make matters worse for Apple, Samsung is growing at 300+% year (and will for another couple of years).

That being said, there's plenty of room for both Apple to Samsung to grow in mobile market. I don't necessarily think Apple's margin is going to shrink in the short-run (but definitely in the longer-un). The same is true for Samsung Electronics whose mobile division is now bringing the most revenue/profit.

Sounds like you have zero clue as to how Asian conglomerates are organized (or intertwined).


and your point being? so can Samsung who sits on $20+B on cash. Samsung will spend something in the order of $40+ Billion dollars this year upgrading/building fabs this year. Apple's past capital investment (or Apple's share of Samsung's entire sales - $9B or 2.5%) to secure NAND FLASH supply a couple of years back isn't quite enough to pay for a fraction of that.

That being said, I see little or no reason for Samsung not to work with Apple. I just find it amusing that Apple fanboys think Samsung can't survive without Apple. Or that the whole world evolves around Apple.

Well, Samsung is privately held so we simply don't know

Goog market cap:201.82 B
MSFT: 275.49 B
AAPL: 543.41B


I'd say you don't need to wait a few years to see the dwarfing you speak of

Samsung Electronics is a public company, largely (50+%) owned by foreign investors - citi being the largest single shareholder.

Which one exactly? What is the ticker symbol and where are they traded?

005930:Korea SE

Thanks! I wish they were traded here too!
Would you know what % of ownership is by the samsung group?

You should be able to look it up on google.com

http://www.samsung.com/us/aboutsamsu...Structure.html

Sorry, you are wrong here. The whole world does not "evolve around Apple."

You mean like how Samsung's memory chips and forthcoming Galaxy phones are reliant on ARM's (England) high tech wizardry? And as everybody knows, that's just the tip of the iceberg for Korean dependence on western and Japanese high-tech. Really, you should know better than to make such silly nationalistic posts by now, lol. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Hol...n-2012_id23291

What you fail to grasp is that Korean companies can manufacture this stuff for western companies CHEAPLY, just like how Chinese companies can. Which is of course, good for Apple but bad for American workers.

http://www.phonearena.com/news/Samsu...n-2012_id23291

Wow, you actually believe your own propaganda. There's a REASON why Nobel laureates in physics and Pioneer spacecraft come from places like Cambridge and the US and not KAIST or Seoul National University (which is only "famous" for Dr. Hwang and his fake stem cell research).
Enjoy those "Korean" Galaxy phones now! :lol

Apple's market cap is now 2x the size of MS's.


I posted about this yesterday. Despite when they want to think (or try to make us think) Samsung relies heavily on other companies for their tech.

• http://forums.appleinsider.com/showp...5&postcount=75

One phrase for you: "Samsung's" Android vs. iOS. Without Google Samsung would already be buried in the Smartphone market - End of story. Yet another of the countless examples of Korean companies benefitting hugely from western tech-savvy engineer and coders.

You ignore Apple's mindshare success in the market.
You ignore Apple's financial success in the market.
You ignore Apple patenting the hell out of the iPhone.
You ignore all the lawsuits Apple has over people stealing their IP.
You ignore the Apple ASICs.
You ignore their ownership of P.A Semi, Anobit, Img Tech, and other companies that are or will be directly responsible for the IP in their devices.
You ignore their OS, apps and services.

[insult removed] The original question was is there a company that makes their products in house. I said Samsung makes "many" not all products themselves. You came back with some crap about Qualcomm and Wacom. That's why I said many, the question wasn't is there a company that makes every product in house. Plus the ones that do have the Qualcomm chips in them are special orders for American telecoms and their pretty bad. The Wacom digitizer is still made by Samsung by the way.

You can't find any smartphone, tablet or PC that just uses Samsung parts. It's just not possible. As I noted on page 2 there are plenty of components that Samsung simply doesn't have the rights to or simply doesn't want to RDM themselves.

As for Samsung being hired by Qualcomm to manufacturer Wacom's digitizers that doesn't make it a Samsung part, it just makes it manufactured by Samsung but if you think that's the same then you should start calling Samsung CE Foxconn products because that is where the majority of their CE is assembled.

Such a dumb comment. Of course they have NO choice. It is work as slave labour for Foxconn or starve to death, a choice that Americans do not have to make on a daily basis.

Pretty amazing, especially considering that Apple was cofounded by a C average student who dropped out of Pomona college in his first semester there. So how many *Western* Nobel physics winners contributed to the design and making of iPhones?

Of course they do, they all do, and it's part of doing business and it makes no sense not to outsource. If business people were hung up on arguments presented in this board, their business would not be doing very well.

The majority of Samsung's phone production is still the "dumb" feature phones. You know, the ones essentially given for free by the carriers. Ditto for Nokia. I believe Nokia still ships more of these than Samsung but both are in the process of focusing on smartphones. The margins are almost non-existent on the feature phones. Samsung needs to get away from producing these phones as new cheaper phones from Chinese makers is gobbling up the low-end.

We can see. That you've been f*cked by their awesome.

Samsung is a public company listed on the Korean stock exchange:

http://markets.ft.com/Research/Marke...?s=A005930:KSC

Market cap of 196.45 trillion won means around $174 billion in US$.

BTW, I was referring to annual revenue. Apple still trails Samsung Electronics in this area but should surpass Samsung by the end of this year or early next year.

Samsung's revenue for 2010 was $133.8 billion with net profits of $13.7 billion. Apple's TTM revenue is $127.8 billion with net profits of $33 billion.

Okay, if you say so. You're entitled to your opinion like anyone else here.

Uhh isn't Nokia still the largest phone manufacture in the world. Maybe not the most profitable but still the largest.

They sell the most units. That's it! Since you're backing tooltalk's comment then explain why Apple, who sells no junk or dumb phones will end up going the way of Nokia and Motorola.

Nokia's revenue has been in a free fall for the past 3~4 years, going from $75 billion in 2007 to something like $56 billion now and falling. Nokia's annual net profits was once $13 billion. Now they're barely at break even and have had some horrendous quarters recently with heavy losses.

What's the point of making more and more unprofitable phones (mainly the dumb feature phones) to keep losing money? Windows Phone will be the last hope over the next few years for Nokia to survive.

Oh I'm not backing up any one just saying that Nokia isn't dead yet which I think he was implying.

I think they are bouncing back though. I have a Lumia 800 as my private phone and I quite like it. Now it doesn't have the presence or as many apps as my now boxed up iPhone 4 does but a really nice phone none the less. I will also probably buy the Proview 808 as well, to replace my Sony camera. A 41 Megapixle camera that can auto post to all my photo sharing sites is pretty neat.

I know everyone here thinks that Apple is the best at everything they do and I understand the mentality I used to be the same way. I just love what other company's have been in the last year, they have really upped their game now that Apple is now ruling everything.

I'm sure the new Nokia phones are good. But we haven't been talking about the merits of devices from different phone vendors on this thread. The key for any mobile device vendor is now the ecosystem, which is also what Nokia's CEO Elop emphasized. He believes there's enough room for a third established ecosystem along with iOS and Android but we'll have to see if that becomes true over the next 2~3 years. It just seems to me that Nokia and Microsoft are poorly positioned based on the strengths and continued expansion of the iOS and Android ecosystems.

Uh, if you can can make an iPhone work without the contributions of Philby, Marconi, Brattain, et al. let me know because you'll be nominated for a Nobel yourself.

Now.... imagine Korea without WESTERN inventions like electricity, telephones, televisions, engines, communications satellites, petrochemicals, and "little" things like oh, flush toilets, automobiles and western medicine, from vaccines to stem cell research (you know what I mean, REAL stem cell research). Not to rub it in your face or sound racist or anything but the simple fact is that Korea would still likely be using 16th century technology and Samsung would not even exist without the benefits and generosity of western which-tech 'magic' . The same simply cannot be said of Apple and Korean technology. End of story. Next.

What you fail to grasp is that Samsung uses American workers down in Austin, Texas (my alma mater city, I went to UT Austin). They use American engineers to make Apple's A5 chips.

There is nothing wrong with making things "cheap". Cheap does not necessarily equate to "low quality". It requires a lot of infrastructure and technology investments to bring down the per unit costs. Going from a 200mm wafer to a 300mm wafer production process (in the case of semiconductor manufacturing) requires R&D money, time and lots of talent. It also requires business acumen in utilizing those said resources. Therefore, this infers that Samsung has the capability that no other "western" companies has ( or any other company regardless of nationality). And with the recent news of other companies having a tough time meeting the stringent quality/cost/delivery time specifications is further proof.

As for the Nobel prize, nobody sets out their research to "win" the Nobel prize. Yes, its an honorary distinction to have and brag about to others, especially if you are working in the research field but not something that is necessary in order to be labeled a "high tech" country. And the work of one individual doesn't necessarily mean that is the practice of an entire nation. I'm sure a guy of your stature who is into research would (or should) know this by now.

For the record, I dont own any smarphones, Samsung or otherwise.


And one thing, its called Re-search as in searching what others have searched and searching it again.


Whats funny is how you steer this conversation about one corporation vs another corporation into a political argument. Those individuals who dont have better comebacks start jumping onto other topics to boost their small egos.


Since we are turning things into a political match, lets talk politics. It just ticks you off that a Korean company is supplying these components to a western company doesnt it? You just wish it was just American companies supplying American companies right? Asians can go to hell right? I sense that you secretly have filled with hate and disgust of a particular race. I pity you.

So what you're saying is that even with chip production, Samsung relies on American high-tech expertise? Yeah, we already knew that just like we know Samsung or Korea Inc. didn't invent microelectronics or even the production methods. Like shipbuilding, western powers-that-be simply found it more 'cost-efficient' to allow labor to migrate to nations where it was a much cheaper hourly rate - and this practice sadly continues to this day. Well,sad for western workers but obviously good for their Korean counterparts.

And exactly how do you know what motivates world-leading scientists? If you're Korean you don't come from a country that has even one to boast about. I do.

As for what constitutes a high-tech country most people would CERTAINLY count Nobel prizes (along with associated awards like Fields medals) as they're a very solid indicator of the world's most important scientific research that leads to things like landing men on the moon, splitting the atom, a better light bulb (also a western invention), the Internet, and antibiotics. And as I'm sure a fellow of your stature has figured out already, very little of the modern world would be recognizable without such discoveries. I.e there would be no Internet in Korea, no Starcraft, no K-pop (maybe a good thing and certainly no power with which to power those things.

Then there are other things like the mobile phone and the camera, two other high-tech western inventions which companies like Samsung simply slap together albeit maybe in a different casing, and then market. Yes they companies are extremely good at marketing and creating a global brand, but at truly ground-breaking scientific R&D, not really. So yeah, when I think "high-tech nations' I guess Korea doesn't exactly come to mind like true powerhouses the US, England, France, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, Japan and so on, it's just another place that's benefitted enormously from the R&D of others.

Not at all - I have great respect for Japanese technology, movies, food, etc. and the Vietnamese are some of the hardest working and smartest people I've ever met. Indian IT blows everything else in Asia away. But yeah I guess it does bewilder me when some insecure Koreans come on Apple forums like this to start trying to convince the world that they're some kind of scientific powerhouse that westerners should be in awe of; or that Korean imitations of real western products are something we ought to buy. But in reflection that's just more pathetic than angering I guess. I'm here because I love many of Apple's products; you're here for....what exactly??? And for sure I wish more American companies - including Apple - would bring those manufacturing jobs home. Anything wrong with that?

There might not be financial statements issued as required by securities laws, but that doesn't mean that each division doesn't have its own internal financial targets. The managers for these divisions are responsible for meeting their goals, and are given considerable leeway in drumming up business and optimizing operations. I doubt that Samsung's LCD division is going to alienate one of its best customers, and take a bath to the tune of billions of dollars, in order to appease the mobile division.

Actually, Samsung's electronics divisions do operate with considerable autonomy. Even so, Samsung's been talking about splitting the electronics operation cleanly in two, with the OEM-oriented component divisions all getting reorganized into an even more autonomous and separate operating entity. That's why Apple maintains a good relationship with Samsung's LCD and semiconductor divisions, even while Samsung's mobile division is engaged in a patent war. All this other conspiracy talk is just the usual scuttlebutt between the pro-Apple and anyone-but-Apple sides.


That investment is why Apple contracted with Samsung to build the retina displays -- because Samsung can fulfill Apple's build order using their existing lines, while LG and Sharp currently cannot. But, if Samsung wants to screw around with Apple on the LCD side, then Apple will obviously take their business elsewhere, and if necessary make capital investments in these competing companies in order to fulfill the build order. Under that scenario, Samsung loses out on billions of dollars in revenues, and their competitors get those billions in revenues and also potentially upgraded production lines that will let them better compete with Samsung in the future. Just because Samsung is sitting on a ginormous cash pile doesn't mean that Samsung's competitors wouldn't benefit tremendously from Apple making capital investments in their facilities.

2.5% of sales, but what % of total capital investments at that time?


That was my point. It benefits both companies, and Samsung would be foolhardy not to take an OEM order from Apple if presented to them. Apple's simply doing the same due diligence with competing OEM bids that would with any other component.


Now you're just projecting.

What makes you think I'm Korean? There you go with your assumptions again. My screen name? I got that because while I was deployed to South Korea in the Army, that was one of the foods that was introduced to me by a fellow Katusa. Besies, what does being South Korean have to do with anything that we are discussing here. This is about corporations vs corporations not nations vs nations. This thread was entirely about two corporations with supply agreements, until you came along and started lashing out with political nonsense. Did I hit a nerve on your part?

I have personal experience with Korean work ethics. They are some of the toughest, strong willed people I've ever come across. Perhaps your preconceived notions about Koreans in general is clouding your judgement (perhaps an ex gf cheated on ya?). I have great respect for Koreans. Seems like there are others who disgree.

Samsung is "bringing" American jobs "home" as is the case with the Austin, Texas plant which is a significant investment upwards of up to $9 Billion. You cant say that for Apple.


Getting back on topic, for I was rudely taken off it by a nonsensical figure in the midst with an ego the size of Texas, its been reported in the latest news that Samsung isnt just the sole supplier of the display. According to Reuters, LG is also supplying Apple. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82D09U20120314

Oh and Radar, you ask what my purpose here on this board? I'm here to stir the pot, raise some serious issues that some fans would want to dismiss/cover up and bring some constructive criticism to the discussion at hand. My purpose is to make Apple a better company through scrutiny. Without people bitching about the pull down notification menu on the previous iOS version, Apple would not have listened to peoples words. I also happen to own some shares in Apple if you think I'm here just to "troll". I do put my money where my mouth is.