Samsung behind 25% of iPhone 4 parts

Does the title surprise you? It certainly did make me sit up quite a bit – after all, aren’t Samsung and Apple embroiled in a rather bitter legal feud at the moment, with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 being barred from hitting the market not only in Australia, but halfway around the world in most of Europe? Interestingly enough, the infographic on the right shows that Apple actually relies heavily on Samsung to deliver up to 25% of the iPhone 4’s parts. Among the components include the flash memory within, DRAM memory and the applications processor which basically makes the entire handset tick.These behind the scene facts show how complex the relation between these gigantic companies are. On one hand, Samsung is a ferocious competitor of Apple. But another part of Samsung makes a ton of money by selling components to Apple. Obviously, this may be puzzling if you look at Samsung as one entity, which is not. Samsung is composed of many divisions that are each run like an independent business. For example, Samsung Mobile has to bid against Apple to get flash memory.

And because Samsung is a huge semiconductor player, there is no way that Apple’s supply chain can completely bypass it. In the end, they just have to work together – even if this may sound ironic from the outside. In the end, Samsung and Apple are great partners on the supply-chain, but ferocious competitors on the design and end-user front.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: Apple Inc, iPhone, iPhone 4, iphone4, Samsung