While the tension on the Apple and Samsung relationship continues to build, Apple seem to be beginning to make a move that will see the company attempting to supply their components from elsewhere.
Digitimes has reported that Apple has increased spending on memory in Japan. According to sources the company plans to start purchasing their DRAM from Elpida and their NAND flash memory from Toshiba. Currently, Samsung owns a large chunk of the market share in both NAND flash memory with 30% and the DRAM market with 40% with both markets likely to take a hit.
A large portion of the iPhone and iPad’s components are currently manufactured by Samsung, which has led to a friendly relationship for the most part. More recently, Samsung have been producing their own smartphones, with the majority running the Google Android operating system. Apple believe that Samsung are violating numerous patents that they own. These days, when Samsung or Apple are mentioned, the majority of the tech world immediately thinks of the outstanding patent war between the companies which has led to the Samsung Galaxy tablet being blocked in various countries.
BGR reported earlier this year that Apple had plans to purchase approximately $7.8billion in components from the company but with the patent wars continuing, relations between the two are in danger.
Additionally, some rumors speculate that Apple plans to remove Samsung from its mailing list for CPU’s with suggestions that they could take their business to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). With Samsung being the largest component manufacturer for Apple, the company has a lot of work ahead of them if they want to phase Samsung supplies out completely.
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