Comment by potatolicious
13 years ago
Gigantic multinational megaconglomerates are, well, huge. They may operate under the same overall banner, but operationally they tend to be almost fully independent entities. Many are legally distinct corporations with their own finances, budgets, and operations.
Apple employing the component manufacturing arm of Samsung can occur simultaneously with Apple suing the consumer device design arm.
The current relationship may not last much longer. It's been reported that Apple has signed a deal with TSMC for 2014.
That is a great way to damage Samsung for Apple. Initially contracting them with a very high-volume and then dropping off to zero. Samsung will make a huge net-loss, if they don't partner up with Microsoft(=Nokia now) or Google in another big deal.
Samsung is actually having trouble meeting their own internal demand for components. IIRC, they were even getting memory from arch-rival Hynix at some point this year. Having Apple dial back might not be such a bad thing for Samsung if it helps sort out their internal supply chain.
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Not true, contract component manufacturing made only 7% of Samsung profits last year. The value of the Samsung branded smartphones they ship out is by far their most important financial metric.
It's just business. The same thing happened when Apple switched from PortalPlayer to Samsung; their stock tanked and they were bought by Nvidia.
I thought upvotes and downvotes are for moderation. It's so childish to downvote someone just because you're not of the same opinion.
I don't think Apple is as interested in being punitive (though some of it might be that) as they are in diversifying supply sources. It's probably unlikely that TSMC will exclusively build them right away, but Apple may shift more over to them if they do a good job.