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Apple remains among Samsung's top revenue sources

Samsung's annual year-end financial report has revealed that rival Apple was one of the South Korean tech giant's top sources of revenue for 2014.
Written by Cho Mu-Hyun, Contributing Writer

Apple was among the top revenue sources for its arch-rival Samsung Electronics last year, a regulatory filing from the South Korean tech giant has said.

According to Samsung's annual end-of-year filings for 2014 to South Korea's Financial Supervisory Service, Apple, Deutsche Telekom, Ingram Micro, Sprint, and Verizon were the top five sources of income for the Korean tech giant, with the companies' business amounting to a collective 13 percent of its revenue.

The amount each contributed was not disclosed in the report, but Samsung posted a total revenue of 206 trillion won ($185 billion) last year.

With the exception of Apple, to which Samsung supplies semiconductors and components, the remaining four are mobile phone distributors, highlighting Samsung's dependence on its mobile business.

Apple, Deutsche Telekom, and Sprint were also among the top five revenue sources for Samsung in 2013, together with China Mobile and Best Buy.

The exclusion of China Mobile for 2014 as a top five revenue source also shows the South Korean company's current difficulties within China. Samsung ceded its top place there to local device manufacturer Xiaomi in the third quarter last year, according to Strategy Analytics, and fell behind Apple in the fourth quarter.

Up until 2011, before the rise of smartphones, Sony, HP, and Dell were among the top five revenue sources for Samsung, which supplied memory chips and LCDs to them.

Samsung supplies memory chips for various Apple products. It is also a major contract maker of Apple's A-series processors that power the iPhone, along with Taiwanese rival TSMC.

Samsung Electronics' display-making subsidiary Samsung Display has also formed a task force to clinch Apple as a client, Samsung insiders say, with the aim to supply LCD and flexible OLED displays to the Cupertino-based tech giant.

A Samsung spokesperson declined to comment on the matter.

Source: ZDNet Korea

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