If you’ve been wondering why Apple and Samsung are still doing display business while the companies are battling in court over patent violations, you won’t have to wonder much longer. According to reports, Samsung will be terminating its contract with Apple and they will stop shipping LCD panels to Apple.
The move, while seemingly obvious at this point, will end a long partnership between Samsung Display and Apple. Samsung sources have gone on the record to the Korean Times stating that Samsung is scaling back shipments to Apple over the next year, and starting next year, the company will cease shipping displays to Apple entirely. The “senior” Samsung source also pointed to the huge price discounts given to Apple for their displays, and indicated that such discounts are unsustainable. Instead of doing business with Apple, the Korean Times is also reporting that Amazon seems to be increasing orders, and may be ready to offset some of the losses Samsung would face.
Just how many displays has Apple ordered this quarter?
shipping over 15 million LCDs, followed by its biggest rival LG Display with 12.5 million and Japan’s Sharp with 2.8 million, said market research firm DisplaySearch … “But Samsung shipped less than 3 million to Apple during the third quarter of this year and we expect the quarterly shipment in the fourth quarter to fall to some 1.5 million,” said the source, who is directly involved with the matter.
There’s no official comment from either Samsung or Apple, obviously. Reports also indicate that the yet to be announced iPad mini will have zero displays from Samsung built into the device. Let’s be honest for a moment though. What’s more likely? Apple pulled its business, or Samsung decided to stop shipping the devices to Apple? We’ll let you decide.
