Samsung Brings Patent Lawsuit Against Apple to U.S.

[tinman0]

You dont seem to know how much pull Samsung has in the components arena do you?

They are
#1 in RAM Memory
#2 in semiconductor LSI
#1 in flat panel display
#1 in rechargeable battery
#2 in mobile phones over all
#1 in NAND flash memory

$8 billion to a company with revenue generation in excess of $140 billion is chunp change. That is around 4% of total revenue.

Never sue your supplier when your supplier can turn around and gobble up other suppliers and increase the price for all OEM makers, but giving itself the cost effective goods, because it also itself is an OEM maker.

Unlike Apple, who is just a customer, Samsung is BOTH a customer AND a supplier at the same time. Either way, they win.

Quite recently, Samsung attempted to take over Sandisk, the NAND flash memory company. It wasnt successful due to some differences in price offers. That alone tells you that Samsung is willing to strangle hold the market even more than it already has. NAND flash market alone, Samsung has over 30 % of the market all to itself. For RAM memory, it close to 40%.

Apple is barking up the wrong tree.

As I said earlier, Samsung are contracted to supply parts, so Apple can do anything they want.

And if Samsung stop providing parts, then they simply open the way for other fabs to take up the slack. And don't bet your bottom dollar that there are companies out there who want Apple's $$.

If Samsung allows it's competition to gear up (eg build a few extra fabs), then the value of their parts will go down as the market gets opened up.

Samsung need Apple more than Apple need Samsung.

====

Ok, for the dim, here is the problem -

Making parts is one thing, we can all make parts, we can all go into our garage and make a random widget. We can make hundreds of those widgets.

But - here is the kicker -

We need someone to buy those widgets.

If no one buys the widgets, we can't make the widgets, and in this scenario Apple sell the widget to the end user. The game is with Apple, not the parts supplier.

 

[AaronEdwards]

Making parts is one thing, we can all make parts, we can all go into our garage and make a random widget. We can make hundreds of those widgets.

But - here is the kicker -

We need someone to buy those widgets.

If no one buys the widgets, we can't make the widgets, and in this scenario Apple sell the widget to the end user. The game is with Apple, not the parts supplier.

Good luck making the parts Apple need in your garage.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

And you seem to only believe that there is only one company can provide Apple it's components?

There are loads of them.

And look at what Apple are doing with screens - they are sourcing parts from multiple companies to make the numbers. Which is exactly how Samsung will be taken apart if needs be.

However, that won't happen anytime soon as Samsung are in cast iron contracts to supply. Samsung defaults, and it will be in a world of financial hurt, far more than pesky patent rows. It will be up against a multi billion dollar default that will make BPs payout in the Gulf look like small change.

Oh again you have no idea how things work in that area.

Even with Samsung in a contract Samsung can still "delay" shipments and if Apple ever needs a rush order... Well opps that not going to happen.
When you piss off supplier or force them to do things it is when shipments become late, delayed and they are not willing to do anything that helps you out.
From working in an industry that used supplier and contract I saw and learned what can and does happen first hand when you piss off your suppliers and the worse part is they can all do it with in the bounds of the contract.

Samsung for example is going to be given so many days late on a shipment before punishment. They also will have a claus in there that accounts for some act of god happening and not getting punished, Japan earthquake for example has given them a pretty wide latituid to be a little late on shipments and receive zero financial punishment.

Breaking the contract would more than likely only be a few million in punishment fees.

Also as it has been pointed out before no one else can really pick up the slack. The entire market for those chips there has been a shortage for years. No one has covered that slack they are struggling across all company involved in production to keep up with the demand from multiple suppliers. Apple is less than 5% of the total market in what is bought up there. When you only are a buyer for less than 5% of the market that is in short supply you have zero control and does not mean someone else can even pick up the slack.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

Samsung is losing money in a lot of areas. They found a buyer finally for their hard drive business:

Seagate buys up Samsung HDD division for $1.375 bi
Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 19 Apr 2011

"As part of the deal, Samsung gets a 9.6 percent ownership stake in Seagate.

Seagate, for its part, will become the sole provider for HDD in Samsung PCs, notebooks, NAS and DVR alongside the extension of a number of cross-license agreements.

Additionally, Seagate now has a guaranteed supply of NAND flash memory for SSD, a huge bonus for the drive maker.

..."

As for this post:

Given the terrific success of the pads & phones, this attack on Samsung by Apple is quite out of place.

Apple isn't attacking Samsung. Apple is defending itself.

 

[dba7dba]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8H7 Safari/6533.18.5)

 

[dba7dba]

If you are going to use Wiki, at least get some uptodate figures.

Apple are putting in $25bn quarters, so I reckon we can predict a close on to $100bn turnover for the 2011/2012 year. Which isn't far off the 2009 figure for Samsung Electronics at $117bn turnover.

As for the 2-3 times - then you are comparing the whole of Samsung Group, which I'm sure you said that you weren't comparing. But even if we were comparing the whole group, it's $100bn vs $175bn. So not 2-3 times. Maybe 3 times if you are comparing 2009 - which again is slightly boring since Apple's financial muscle has increased hugely in the last 18-24 months.

At best, you were being disingenius when you said "2-3" times for the electronics group, (wiki shows $65bn vs $117bn), when 65 is clearly more than half of 117. As you have trouble with maths, 65*2 is 130. And, taking no chances, 117 is less than 130.

So quite where your "2-3" comes from I have no idea.

Maybe as a hater your maths are failing you? Who knows.

My bad as I was upset at people spewing ignorance without checking facts.

My point was people should check facts before saying things like apple should buy samsung. samsung group is bigger than apple and samsung electronics (largest part of samsung group) alone is bigger than apple. apple is in NO position to buy samsung or any other large scale manufacturer.

Yeah sorry about the bad math. But what can I say as I'm a product of US public education system?

 

[dba7dba]

But - here is the kicker -

We need someone to buy those widgets.

If no one buys the widgets, we can't make the widgets, and in this scenario Apple sell the widget to the end user. The game is with Apple, not the parts supplier.

Delete

 

[dba7dba]

However, look at the profits and Apple makes around the same or more than the entire Samsung conglomerate with 1/5 the workforce.

samsung afaik OWNS and runs their own factories, largely is SK and other nations. their employees spend their salaries and pay taxes.

apple outsources all manufacturing. None in US. When what do they do with such big pile of cash made from not running factories? They park it in some overseas bank account to avoid paying tax to US.

Don't be fooled by headcount/profit ratio.

 

[dba7dba]

Samsung is losing money in a lot of areas.

Delete

 

[ten-oak-druid]

I saw a commercial for RIM's playbook the other day. It has some uniqueness to the interface. Sure all tablets are going to be similar to an extent but at least RIM tried to put a little originality into theirs unlike Samsung and their blatant copy of the ipad.

 

[CQd44]

I saw a commercial for RIM's playbook the other day. It has some uniqueness to the interface. Sure all tablets are going to be similar to an extent but at least RIM tried to put a little originality into theirs unlike Samsung and their blatant copy of the ipad.

I can't wait to see the TouchPad. webOS is pretty nifty