NEW YORK: Samsung has set apart an elite team of 200 professionals from Samsung Display Co. Ltd to exclusively concentrate on manufacturing display products for Apple devices. Starting from April 1st, the crew is assigned to work for Apple, the prominent, prestigious and lucrative American tech giant. Hitting the road on April 1st does not signify that it is an April fool’s fun rather the Bloomberg reports confirm the news after talking to the company spokesman, Kim Ho Jung, who declined to give elaborated news.
Samsung declined to comment on the report but said in a statement to ZDNet that it split its LCD and OLED divisions at the start of the month.
“Samsung Display was established as a manufacturing company in 2012 and is operated independently from Samsung Electronics. On April 1, a restructuring was initiated to strengthen “Responsibility Management System”. As a result, we now have LCD and OLED divisions. But we cannot disclose any specific organization status and management direction,” the statement said.
Details of the dedicated Apple display team follow reports earlier this month from Korea that Samsung Display had established a taskforce to win deals with Apple to supply LCD and flexible OLED displays.
Bloomberg reported that Samsung is relying more heavily on its semiconductor and display businesses after a year of falling profits from its smartphone business.
According to analysts Strategy Analytics, Apple’s iPhones accounted for 89 percent of all smartphone profits worldwide during the fourth quarter of 2014, leaving Android OEMs to scrap for the remaining 11 percent, down from 29 percent the year before. Most of the decline in Android OEMs’ profit share was due to Samsung.
Apple was one of Samsung’s top five sources of revenue for 2013 and 2014, according to the company’s annual filings. Until last year Samsung exclusively supplied Apple with chips for the iPhone and iPad, however it was replaced by TSMC for devices released this year.
However, according to earlier reports, it appears Samsung will return to the fold, manufacturing Apple’s A9 chips, scheduled for use in the next iPhone. According to Bloomberg, Samsung will make them at its Giheung plant in South Korea. Samsung was also said to be making chips for Apple’s Watch.
