Apple has a hard time making friends in the industry due to it's self centered and arrogant nature. Apple has been involved in a slue of lawsuits this year, all regarding it's flagship device, the iPhone. Oddly, Apple even decided to sue one of it's iPhone part suppliers. Why would Apple decide to take action against it's own supplier? This is because the other company actually has a rather successful line of smartphones itself, the Samsung line of Galaxy phones.
Samsung, the South Korean technology company, currently has the world's largest market share of smart phone shipments with 32% of shipments in the third quarter of 2012, according to this report. It is no surprise that Apple is feeling a little jealous, being in second place with less than half of that at 15.5%.
| Vendor | Q3 2012 | Q3 20122 | Growth | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shipments (millions) | % share | Shipments (millions) | % share | ||
| Total | 173.7 | 100% | 120.4 | 100% | 44.3% |
| Samsung | 55.5 | 32.0% | 27.3 | 22.7% | 103.6% |
| Apple | 26.9 | 15.5% | 27.3 | 22.7% | 103.6% |
| Sony | 8.8 | 5.1% | 6.2 | 5.2% | 41.1% |
| HTC | 8.4 | 4.8% | 13.1 | 10.9% | -36.1% |
| RIM | 7.3 | 4.2% | 11.8 | 9.8% | -38.4% |
| Others | 66.9 | 38.5% | 44.9 | 37.3% | 48.8% |
Just this year, Apple filed a massive lawsuit against Samsung, claiming that the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Tab 10.1 infringed on a patented way of scrolling through an image gallery on a touchscreen device. Courts around the world found Samsung guilty of the infringement and banned the sale of the devices running Android 2.2.1 and higher. Samsung fought back, and won a victory against Apple in October when a US court judge lifted the ban on the Galaxy Tab. Samsung, slightly bitter over the incident, filed it's own lawsuit against the iPhone 5 for violations against it's LTE technology.
Apple and Samsung haven't always been on such poor terms, in fact until recently Samsung had been the sole supplier of CPUs that power both the iPhone and iPad. Apple has given their contract to Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacture Company (TSMC) who will start producing chips for the next round of iOS devices in 2013. It's uncertain that TSMC will be able to handle the volume of production that Apple demands while keeping it's other clients, like Altera, Qualcomm and nVidia, happy.
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