Although it's only prudent that they still keep each-other at arms length, and scrutinize every business decision with the other.
Btw, Samsung is so massive and diversified that it is into areas like Construction, Ship Building, Finance, Automobile, Retail. Its a very different company. It adapts to any domain, very fast. Few years back it became Top player in consumer electronics,last year it surpassed Apple in smart phones sales, had been a top player in Memory and tomorrow if space travel is the money spinner, it will be there.
You know Burj Khalifa, Taipei 101, Petronas are all built by Samsung ofcourse Samsung Engineering & Construction. So we need to mind which part of samsung we are talking about.
I remember that between getting off of the plane and going to bed, I had ridden in at least 2 Samsung built vehicles (a bus and a taxi -- dunno about the subway), shopped in a Samsung owned store, made some phone calls on a Samsung phone, got into a Samsung built apartment building and taken a Samsung elevator up to an apartment filled with Samsung appliances where I went to sleep watching news on a Samsung TV.
Later, on the same trip I experienced a very similar conglomerate built world in the form of LG and Daewoo, even getting a trip to a massive Daewoo ship building facility that cranked out - to spec - everything from oil tankers to submarines.
Then I went to Seoul and saw that same company brand on top of the largest skyscraper in the city - Daewoo.
Absolutely mind blowing.
And the only one of them that's making big money right now is mobile. That's where most of Samsung's (and I mean the big diversified company, including building boats and selling insurance) income has been coming from the last 2 years.
Samsung is very focussed on mobile right now.
Mobile handsets may be the largest slice of the pie, but that's only because it's so easy to pad the margins.
Furthermore there is value to participating in other industries, even if only to break even. The expertise and business relationships are certainly contributing to Samsung's bottom line in ways other than revenue.
Apple is like the USA to Samsung's China in this specific relationship in that the product (components in this case) pretty much goes one way, but both still rely on the relationship.
Samsung makes some of the components Apple needs, Apple buys those components. Apple needs Samsung for inexpensive chip fab, Samsung needs Apple for the revenue provided in return.
In this particular case though (Samsung/Apple) the overlapping interest is part of Apple's core, and just one of many Samsung divisions. It would not be (or at least it's not obvious that it would be) in Samsung's interest to poison the well of their component division just because it happens that their phone division competes with Apple. Ditching Apple may not, on its own, be an issue after a couple years, but it would put other component customers on edge. See the concern some Android phone manufacturers had when Google bought Motorola's mobile division for a similar issue but from the software side.
Nobody would seriously end this relationship from Samsungs end, at least if they had any brain cells.
And someone is going to take away the handset business - everyone in asia is basically waiting for Huawei and ZTE to eat Samsung's lunch. Samsung can't compete with either of them on cost, and eventually they won't be able to pump more pixels into 400+ppi screens to keep customers from buying cheaper smartphones. And without unique software to offer consumers (like Apple), Samsung is extremely vulnerable in the handset market.
And in the meantime, Samsung is amortizing a fortune's worth of chips fabs that were mostly built to supply components for iDevices.
Yes, Samsung needs Apple's business.
Samsung do have their own Software (Tizen, and Bada(?), and a third 'unknown' base). They are pushing for an Android compatible linux, with strong hardware integration. Huawei and ZTE won't be able to compete with that. They could fail completely on that strategy, but they are doing more than just increasing PPI.
This isn't a competitive edge against Huawei and ZTE because no one buys Samsung phones for their software.
Not sure how you can judge a whole companies software engineers, based on one project (Touchwiz).
No they don't. Android has the largest ecosystem. They're riding on Android's train - they don't have their own train. And they're on the Android train with Huawei. And if they're dumb enough to jump off the train, then they're in the bushes.
Samsung has a huge brand, they could easily make Tizen a competitor by deploying it on Galaxy Phone in the future. Consumers wouldn't know (or care)
No they couldn't. Brand doesn't count for anything if you're selling the same stuff your competitor is. Substitutability. The top phones from Apple, Samsung, and HTC offer more for more money than what Huawei can offer right now because there's room for mobile hardware innovation, and that's what they do best. Once they hit a ceiling - no more pixels to add to the screen, no more transistors on the CPU without exceeding a reasonable thermal envelope - then its all Huawei's game. The only one of those three that stands a chance is Apple because they have their own ecosystem.
Samsung has more brand recognition than Huawei. And it doesn't matter a whit. They'll still get steam-rolled once the ppi wars are over and we're buying based on price. This is the grim reality that Samsung shareholders have been realizing.
Not sure how you can judge a whole companies software engineers, based on one project (Touchwiz).
I've owned many Samsung products and have had no good experiences with their software or drivers. I'm willing to be convinced otherwise, but so far they seem to fit the stereotype of the hardware-company-that-doesn't-get-and-can't do-software.
"need" may not have been the be the best word to use there. I didn't mean to imply that either needs the other by the strictest sense of the word. I meant it more in the sense of "I need my morning coffee". I don't really need it, but I'd, you know, really, really like to have it.