Even though it has plenty of reasons for hating the iPhone, Samsung should also love Apple’s top product for as long as possible, a new report suggests. Not only is Apple bringing plenty of business to Samsung even though the two companies compete fiercely in the mobile landscape, but a recent regulatory filing in South Korea revealed that the iPhone maker was one of Samsung’s top five customers again last year, just like in 2013.
As a result, Samsung will undoubtedly love to continue hating the iPhone as it does now for as long as possible.
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Apple, Deutsche Telekom, Ingram Micro, Sprint and Verizon were Samsung’s main clients for 2014, with their combined business amounting to 13% of Samsung’s revenue for the year. That’s a huge chunk of the $185 billion in revenue the company reported in 2014.
Samsung didn’t break down the numbers, so it’s not clear how much money Samsung earned from Apple. But, as ZDNet reports, Apple buys all sorts of components from Samsung including iPhone and iPad parts, while the other four companies are all just mobile phone distributors.
In 2013, Apple, Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, China Mobile and Best Buy were Samsung’s top five customers.
These details reveal not only how important the component division is for Samsung, but also that Apple had a hand in Samsung’s consistent profit dips last year. The fact that China Mobile, the world’s largest carrier, wasn’t a top Samsung client last year suggests that Samsung indeed lost the battle in China to competitors including Xiaomi, which sells many affordable iPhone-inspired flagship smartphones, and Apple, which sold a record number of iPhones during the Christmas quarter.
Even though Samsung has already come up with better iPhone 6 rivals, the company is likely not looking to lose Apple as a customer. On top of existing chips contracts for iPhones and iPads, Samsung is reportedly looking to sell LCD and flexible OLED displays to Apple in the future, the report notes.
