Samsung and Apple is tech’s “unhappiest marriage” | Hacker News Reader

Samsung and Apple is tech’s “unhappiest marriage”

9to5mac.com

79 pointsretskrad64 comments

I recall Apple being a very "aggressive" customer during my time at Samsung's semiconductor manufacturing lines in ATX.

Lots of ridiculous lot priority schemes were foisted upon us. I suspect due to Apple iterating their LSI designs like they owned the place.

Care to share more details.

Would make for a fascinating read.

+1 for more details in a blog

Apple is aggressive with all their vendors. If you're taking money from Apple they want to call all the shots and they don't have any problems holding your feet to the fire or acting borderline unprofessional when it comes to demands.

It kinda feels like the situations mentioned here may be attention grabbing, but also not really all that surprising?

I mean "marriages" like this don't really seem all that uncommon in tech today.

For example, Sony makes laptops that sell Windows which really just further cements Microsofts stake in gaming while also putting the playstation up against xbox (also they signed an agreement in the Cloud for gaming).

Apple has the relationship with Google for search and at one point maps.

AWS is adding more and more ties to other cloud systems like Azure.

I am sure there are plenty of other examples of companies using other companies products even though somewhere else they are competing. And then when they need to share information they are very careful or borderline hostile.

But these companies have such a large portfolio that you can't shoot yourself in the foot (put out a poor product) at the cost of not doing business with someone who may have a conflict of interest.

> Sony makes laptops that sell Windows

Not the case for … (checks notes) 9 years.

it looks like 9 years or so ago they spun off but own branding and other parts?

https://us.vaio.com/

They sold Vaio and spun off Bravia.

Huh... you are right.

Well my bad, I have never been in the market for a non gaming windows computer so didn't think to check. I just assumed that was still part of their business.

What is it that makes Apple so reliant on Samsung displays?

It uses TMSC to make chips which is a "neutral" company.

Is there no "neutral" equivalent of display manufacturing?

Is Samsung just so advanced in displays that nobody else can catch up?

Yes, at least in smartphone displays. I believe the closest competitor is LG, and their displays are noticeably, visibly worse.

LG seems to have focused in the appliance business (TV screens, domestic consumer electronics, etc) and they white label 99% of the OLED panels coming off of their assembly line, with some making their way into Samsung TVs. While Samsung has a superior panel for small displays, LG’s focus consumer electronics has given it a small lead in the larger display race. They have better SDK/HDKs, more power efficient screens, and an array of tiers of displays to sell to their customers. If you bought a Sony, Vizio, or Sharp branded TV in the last 5 years, it for sure has an LG display in it. Other brands use LG as well but those three have an exclusive contract.

The dynamics of this business is fascinating.

No Samsung tv has LG Oled panel. Last year Samsung released their first Oled tv since 2013 with their own panel. Also top of the line Sony TVs started using Samsung QD-Oled last year.

At the beginning of 2021 there were talks of Samsung using LG Displays in their TVs, but it never any outcome from it.

Apple also used BOE OLEDs (12th and 13th I think?) and the iPhone 12 OLED displays have just some of the worst viewing angles I've ever seen out of any display, including cheap TN panels like those IBM and Lenovo liked to put into Thinkpads. Though apparently there is quite some sample variation to that... also tons of purple/green fringing but apparently that's considered normal for phone OLEDs.

That purple/green thing is also on LG tvs and samsung amoled phone/tablet screens.

Yes, it's not because of the OLED tech but due to the weird pixel arrangements many of them use.

I don't know about the 12th cos I skipped it, but the viewing angles on the 13 are great...

BOE LCDs on non-Mac notebooks are horrible: they almost universally use low-frequency PWM dimming, which gives me a really bad headache.

Korea simply ate Taiwan's lunch when it came to displays. Samsung got a big boost from Sony and LG from Philips and quickly grew to massive scales with the mobile boom. Samsung invested heavily in OLED and gathered a huge war-chest of patents / near complete market dominance, then managed to escape the worst of the political fallout from the LCD price-fixing scandal [0]. Their Japanese and Taiwanese competitors didn't invest as early or heavily, so they fell far behind. Apple spent millions propping up Sony's mobile display division in particular as a second sourcing option (as well as buying their production equipment), but Samsung was simply too far ahead and reinvesting too much to compete. LG is a strong competitor today and chinese competitors are really starting to narrow the gap though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TFT-LCD_(Flat_Panel)_Antitrust...

Just one data point:

I bought a Samsung Odyssey G9 Neo - a 1600+ euro monitor - in April last year. It's been more than 3 months that I try to get it fixed because of multiple issues:

- random "ticking" sounds

- screen corruption when using it via DP (random glitches)

- when using picture-by-picture, via the 2 HDMI connections, it randomly switches left and right inputs, when waking the computer from sleep

- 2 dead/stuck pixels (which Samsung support said doesn't qualify for a repair/replacement - it must be more than x pixel in a certain y area!?)

(yes, I've changed the DP/HDMI cables, tested on Windows/macOS/Linux, updated to the latest firmware).

Is Apple a shitty customer? Most probably. Are Samsung displays good? Abso-f**ing-lutely no!

I know it's just one data point, but I will never purchase another Samsung product (willingly/knowingly).

Yup, my experience closely mirrors yours. Samsung products always have a very impressive spec sheet, but just don’t last that long, reliability wise. Something that all of the sponsored youtube tech reviewers I see never seem to bring up…

Same. There was a thread on HN a while back about Samsung’s reliability issues. They seem to focus on feature set and specs over reliability and it has worked for them. I don’t but Samsung products anymore, but obviously a lot of people do.

Samsung’s panels may be fine, but their fully assembled monitors and TVs are unreliable and break at a high rate.

True or not, in the past there was a persistent rumor going around Seoul that every time Apple had scouted out a good location for its first store in Korea, Samsung would mysteriously learn of it and manage to block the transaction. Definitely a scorched earth competitive relationship.

Samsung and Apple were in court for 7 years over patent infringement claims. Apple won, but then they were in court for many more years trying to determine what the damages should be.

They finally settled outside of court in an anti-climactic ending.

If True that is really petty and goes to show the competition was at a different level all together.

> Apple has tried and failed many times over the years to ditch Samsung. One such attempt occurred when Apple had hoped to use microLED display technology instead of OLED in the iPhone X

This sounds a _bit_ far-fetched? It's really, really, hard to imagine a phone-scale MicroLED being practical at _any_ price _now_, never mind when the iPhone X came out or at a price anyone could afford.

> This sounds a _bit_ far-fetched? It's really, really, hard to imagine a phone-scale MicroLED being practical at _any_ price _now_, never mind when the iPhone X came out or at a price anyone could afford.

This sounds a _bit_ far-fetched? It's really, really, hard to imagine a phone-scale LiDAR being practical at _any_ price _now_, never mind when the iPhone 12 Pro came out or at a price anyone could afford.

(For reference, LiDAR cost tens of thousands of dollars and took a ton of space before being miniaturized in iPhones)

> (For reference, LiDAR cost tens of thousands of dollars and took a ton of space before being miniaturized in iPhones)

Samsung, LG and Huawei all used lidar in phones before Apple. I don't believe any of them still do due to lack of adoption. Basically not many used it to justify the cost.

Not trying to argue, but do you have a source for that? I can't find any examples of handheld consumer LiDAR before Apple.

This seems to be a misunderstanding. Samsung had some time-of-flight camera technology it used on a few models, but not LIDAR. I've seen some tech articles blur the distinction enough that people think Samsung was including LIDAR on smartphones like the S20.

That depends on if it's a microLED backlit LCD or microLED direct emissive. For a backlight, it seems possible, for direct emission, all I've heard about those so far have rather large pixels, so it wouldn't work for a phone.

To be fair, the "second unhappiest marriage" is between SEC (the parent OEM Samsung) and their associated Samsung display and IC companies (SDC and SLSI). Samsung is run a different way (hyper competitive - search for their annual VP promotion/firing - battle royale) and sees it's suppliers and customers as competitors. It's like Amazon from an earlier era on steroids. Every possible source of margin is theirs to take.

For clarity, you really have to distinguish the OEM from the display manufacturer. They compete internally for margin. Also, it's not just Apple that is excluded from display fabs... that's like everyone unless you're invited by a VP. Even then expect them to take away every device (including pencil and paper) you have in addition to your passport. It's not surprising Apple engineers would work from their hotel rooms.

Expert advice: If they take your passport and won't return it, call the US embassy and say you are being held against your will.

It's normal to keep an ID in many buildings in Asia at the front desk while you're visiting. Why would they possible not 'return a passport'? What for?

Well to be fair, it's rarely your direct contacts who are the issue, but if you're working late (in Korea that means after midnight) and you need a signature from a senior manager (VP) to leave who is not available, and security will not return your documents without the signature (that would also include any non-Samsung phone/laptop etc) then you're stuck. If you have a flight from Incheon at 6am, then you need to leave at least 3 hours earlier (preferably 4) from Seoul (and more from Suwon). You need to start making A LOT of noise at about 2am or you won't leave until the next day.

Interestingly, the only places that I've ever seen hold passports are Korean and Chinese mobile device and display Fabs. Not European or Japanese, and not laptop or IC Fabs... weird.

Honestly the anecdotes seem like the sort of thing that happens all the time. I don't have access to the article cited but the two have brought so many products to market together that a bit of friction seems unavoidable.

As an aside, I am excited to see what Apple can do when they start making displays in-house.

before samsung it was adobe. a friend of mine who used to work for adobe described the marriage as "staying together for the benefit of the kids."

Clownish from apple people to complain about other companies protecting their engineering secrets.

URL should be https://www.theinformation.com/articles/how-apples-need-for-...

Some of it is paywalled, seems interesting... Got another link perhaps?

Absolutely the right thing to do given what Apple did to previous collaborators like Imagination Technologies for GPUs and what they tried to do to Qualcomm for modems.

https://mashable.com/article/apple-imagination-takeaway

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25673631

https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-office-near-imagi...

In general, Apple suppliers have to take the “financial risk of storing and absorbing the cost of unneeded parts,” but that’s not the case for Samsung.

Good job standing up to a bully, Samsung! I imagine TSMC is the one other supplier that manages to do that.

Disagree. More like symbiotic parasitic relationship. They wouldn't exist without each other, at this point.

South Korea’s government would surely prop up Samsung.

The Obama administration vetoed an ITC ruling that would have blocked the importation of some iPhones and iPads after Samsung won a patent case against Apple.

Governments thumb the scales for hometown heroes.

Lol apples relationship with the world is like being with an abusive partner. They want to control everything you do, control who you interact with, control how you spend your money. Apples toxic af and the red flags have been flying for years.

At what point does Apple just buy Samsung?

Given the percentage of Korean GDP for which Samsung accounts, and the political influence they wield, they're effectively a state institution. We can assume they're not for sale, ever.

Antitrust laws in US/EU make that unlikely. Maybe they could buy Samsung Display though, if Samsung the conglomerate got desperate enough?

I highly doubt South Korean regulators would approve a sale of their largest single GDP contributor

Yeah. I meant from an antitrust perspective.

They maybe could, but I think it would be pretty unlikely. A lot of Asain companies strive to bring everything in house. Samsung Display is not just for making TVs, but also internal B2B as a supplier for Samsung phones, and such. This allows them to evade or not take as much of a hit by the value added tax I believe? If Samsung sold their display division, they would would then have to pay the 10% VAT on each display to make their phones. Right now, Samsung display can make the screens and they don't have to pay VAT.

My understanding of S. Korean VAT could also be wrong.

Businesses always pay VAT on purchases, and collect VAT on sales, but can reclaim the paid VAT if purchase was done for business purposes. This basically means that the ultimate wholly VAT payer is always the end consumer (person, not business).

So while costs are added on to the customer, it would result in a price raise resulting in lessening their competitive advantage. While they may not eat costs, it may cause them to loose out on potential customers, so they would still feel the VAT, just not directly then, correct?

> So while costs are added on to the customer, it would result in a price raise resulting in lessening their competitive advantage.

Every business that sells goods/services in VAT country collects VAT and transfers it to tax authority. There's no any advantage or disadvantage for someone, everyone plays by the same rules.

To sum it up, businesses "do not pay" VAT (technically they pay, but then reclaim it at the end of the month). All VAT burden always falls on the end consumer. Wikipedia says, that VAT is similar to sales tax, but since I'm not too familiar with sales tax, can't comment on that similarity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax

Gotcha, thanks for the explanation!

Even if they could do this they'd probably be forced to stay in the same business as Samsung supplying displays to third parties (e.g. all of the Google Pixel phones have Samsung displays). It's really hard to imagine Apple would want to be in the business of doing display R&D and then selling the technology to competitors.

True.

Samsung is like what happens if Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Xbox, and all of these divisions were actually separate companies with a very loose federation underneath the name "Microsoft" even though the real "Microsoft" doesn't have much power over any of the individual members.

As a result, you've got Samsung Display putting screens in iPhones and occasionally screwing over Samsung Electronics which is a completely separate company, that is still within the loose federation (and, due to the unusual legal structure and antitrust concerns, Samsung Display can't offer even the slightest of unfair deals to their own Samsung Electronics group, for example). And on the fringe ends you have Samsung Life Insurance, Samsung Skyscraper Construction, and Samsung Medical.

My favorite recent one is how the mobile division started refusing to use new Exynos chips from the semiconductor division. Imagine if Apple designed and built an A16 chip and then put Qualcomm SoCs in the iPhone.

A while ago I learnt that Samsung made artillery guns as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K9_Thunder

I wonder if it runs bixby.

CPU is i486 and it runs DOS. Also Samsung subsidiary that made it was sold 9 years ago. So no Bixby.

Apple has 57.1% of the US Smartphone market, Samsung has 29.3%, the next competitor has less than 5%.

I know antitrust regulators are mostly asleep at the switch, but they might wake up for that.

(And the US isn’t the only jurisdiction and smartphones aren’t the only market regulators might have concerns about.)

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