HTC: Samsung uses key component supply as a competitive weapon
Samsung’s been doing this whole “electronics thing” for a quite sometime now. As one of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers, Samsung not only makes some of the most kickass smartphones on the market, but they also build their own semiconductors (CPU’s), memory, washers, televisions, cameras — basically if it’s tech, Samsung’s got their hands in it. There’s no question they’ve worked hard to get where they’re at today, with an almost overbearing presence in the smartphone market alone.
The thing is Samsung doesn’t just make all these goodies for themselves. One of Samsung’s biggest customers has long been Apple, whose chose Samsung to build the “Retina” displays in their iPad. In fact, it wasn’t too long ago that HTC too was Samsung customer. At one point, both the Nexus One and HTC Desire housed AMOLED displays until, well… Samsung stopped. This forced HTC to use traditional LCD not just for these devices, but from every device then on.
Apparently there’s still some bad blood over Samsung’s decision to reject HTC’s AMOLED orders back in 2010. In an interview, president of HTC North Asia Jack Tong learned some hard lessons about Samsung after their dealings saying, “We found that key component supply can be used as a competitive weapon.” According to Focus Taiwan, Samsung may have “strategically declined” HTC’s business in order to come out on top in the smartphone race (and boy, did it work).
While this could be seen as an underhanded move by Samsung, in the long run it didn’t exactly hurt HTC. HTC was able to bounce back after transitioning to SLCD, which has been widely seen as superior to AMOLED thanks to a more traditional RGB layout.
Perhaps we’ll never know the whole story, but one thing is clear: HTC still has their sights locked onto Samsung, and if better smartphones are built as the result of this rivalry, it’s only us, the consumer, that wins in the end.
[via The Verge]