How Apple and Samsung Became Rivals is something that will keep you mulling over, especially if you have a knack for using the best flagship smartphones! What do you suppose went wrong between these top-of-the-line companies? Well, we will present the facts that orchestrated the feud to satisfy your realm of curiosity.
Since they seemingly have the biggest rivalry in the smartphone industry, we’ll shed some light on the apparent factors and backstory related to How Apple and Samsung Became Rivals to bridge the gap in your questions.
How Apple and Samsung Became Rivals
Why do you think people are crazy about flagship smartphones? From an ardent technophile to a brand-conscious individual, everyone wants a high-end flagship smartphone to make the most out of its mind-boggling features, quality, and brand name.
Well, which is the latest phone on your wishlist? You’ll most likely say it’s the latest model of the sophisticated Apple iPhone 13 pro max or the feature-packed Samsung S-22 ultra! But why does it ultimately come down to Apple and Samsung? It’s because they’ve taken the market by storm and turned into each other’s competitors conspicuously.
Brief History of Rivalry
Mega companies have mega rivalries, don’t they? To start with, the big-name tech giant Apple started its journey in 1976, and the electronics conglomerate Samsung Group entered the electronics industry in 1969. Since then, they’ve reached the peak of popularity throughout the years.
According to the Forbes Global 2000 list, in 2021, Apple’s and Samsung Electronics’ market value reached $2,252.3 Billion and $510.5 Billion USD! Well, this gives you a rough idea of how they’re ruling the world market.
So now, if you’re loyal to Apple, you’ll be influenced to dig deeper into this tech giant’s history of rivalry. Their rivalry started with IBM in the ’80s, Microsoft in the ’90s, and Google in the 2000s. Afterward, this list of rivals included Samsung, which became more definitive. Apart from Samsung competing with Apple in the notebook, tablet, and smartphone markets, they also supply Apple with the key components to manufacture Apple’s superior devices. For instance, the iPhone’s NAND flash memory chip was produced and supplied by Samsung when they decided to enter the semiconductor market, followed by making OLED displays for Apple.
Both the CEOs of Apple and Samsung had a friendly and cooperative relationship back then. Adding to that, if you want to explore how these ubiquitously renowned companies’ congenial relationships took a bitter turn, you have room for solid observation and research.
Friends Turned Foes!
You know it’s downright chaotic when long-term friends turn into foes! Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened in the case of Apple and Samsung. These two companies started as friends back when Samsung started making electronics for their biggest client Apple, which amounted to billions of dollars. Soon afterward, Samsung introduced their Android-powered galaxy series smartphones in 2009. And this was not taken lightly by Steve Jobs, the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc., who accused Samsung of stealing their operating system.
Due to this, long-term allies turned into archenemies by 2011 as Apple made at least 16 claims that Samsung imitated Apple’s design, operating system, and more. And three of the infringement acts stood out when they slavishly copied Apple’s innovative technology, distinctive user interfaces, and elegant and distinctive product and packaging style.
These violated Apple’s valuable material possession rights in the name of Trade dress infringement, trademark infringement, and infringement of style patents. Although Apple approached Samsung, Samsung declined that they’ve infringed any of Apple’s patents. Thus, the war was on, and it continued for a long time.
Mutual Dependency
Despite having a nerve-wracking rivalry, these two giant corporations have a mutual dependency, which may take you by surprise. Apart from selling phones and appliances, Samsung has the enormous capability to supply the worldwide demand for memory chips and OLED displays. As Apple can’t manufacture its own OLED displays, they depend on Samsung. On another note, Apple is the biggest client of Samsung which deals in a massive amount of money. So even though Apple decided to invest in LG to break Samsung’s monopoly streak, they shelled billions of dollars, bolstering Samsung’s huge profits and growth. Simply put, Apple relies on Samsung to produce high-quality parts, whereas Samsung depends on Apple to shop for the parts they create. If this doesn’t prove these brands need each other despite being archrivals, what else would?
Collaborative Work & Future Plans
At present, Apple and Samsung seem to have eased off their rivalry for the time being. In spite of the continuous feud and lawsuits in the past, Apple and Samsung decided to continue their business relationship to incur fewer losses on both sides and avoid lawsuit charges. Also, you’ll be surprised to know Samsung provides crucial components to Apple to date.
As a matter of fact, Samsung earned 110 dollars for every iPhone X, which amounted to a hundred thirty million units, which adds up to over fourteen billion bucks for Samsung. If you compare that to the revenue of their own Galaxy S8 at 10 billion dollars, you’ll easily comprehend how symbiotic the relationship between these two corporations is to get befitted on both ends.
Interestingly, these two companies made a possible deal that surprised the technophiles. There’s a possibility Apple would bring iTunes, movies, and television shows to Samsung’s sensible TVs through AirPlay’s support. That implies the users of Samsung smart TVs would have access to the iTunes library, rent or get movies, and play videos, photos, music, podcasts, and more directly from the iTunes store.
As Apple TV comes as a set-top box, this collaboration may offer the chance to take it to the next level because Samsung can probably sell more TVs since they’ll have iTunes and AirPlay. Likewise, Apple can perhaps sell more movies and television shows since more people will be searching on the iTunes Store.
Comparison with Existing Brands
According to Statista, Apple held the largest portion of the global smartphone market with the launch of the iPhone 13 in 2021 by shipments during the fourth quarter of 2021, after ranking second in 2020 and the first three quarters of 2021, when Samsung was the leading smartphone vendor.
While Apple and Samsung usually are the two major companies challenging for the top spot, Huawei has provided a strong challenge in recent years as its market share reached 20 percent in the second quarter of 2020.
Moving forward, according to Cnet, Samsung obtained the top spot for smartphone shipments in 2021, holding 20 percent of the market share globally after shipping 272 million phones during the year. Following that, Apple came in second, at 235.7 million phones, Xiaomi with 191 million, Oppo with 133.5 million, and Vivo with 128.3 million.
Global Smartphone Shipments (in Millions)
| Brands | Q4 2020 | Q1 2021 | Q2 2021 | Q3 2021 | Q4 2021 | Q1 2022 | Q2 2022 | Q3 2022 |
| Samsung | 62.5 | 76.6 | 57.6 | 69.3 | 69.0 | 74.5 | 62.5 | 64.3 |
| Apple | 81.9 | 59.5 | 48.9 | 48.0 | 81.5 | 59.0 | 46.5 | 49.2 |
| Xiaomi | 43.0 | 48.5 | 52.5 | 44.4 | 45.0 | 39.0 | 39.5 | 40.5 |
| OPPO* | 34.0 | 38 | 33.6 | 38.1 | 33.9 | 30.9 | 28.2 | 29.5 |
| vivo | 33.4 | 35.5 | 32.5 | 33.7 | 29.3 | 24.8 | 25.2 | 26.0 |
| Others | 139.8 | 96.8 | 98.0 | 108.5 | 112.7 | 98.1 | 92.3 | 92.4 |
| Total Market | 394.6 | 354.9 | 323.1 | 342.0 | 371.4 | 326.4 | 294.5 | 301.9 |
Samsung and Apple Smartphone Sales Data
On one side, Samsung had suffered a steep drop-off in shipments due to the life-threatening Coronavirus pandemic in 2020. It’s wise to mention that this company shipped 75.5 million units in the second quarter of 2019, a figure which fell to 54.2 million units by the second quarter of 2020. While the shipments increased during the year, they fell back to 69 million units in the third quarter of 2021.
On the other side, Apple is a massive manufacturer of smartphones worldwide. In the fourth quarter of 2020, it shipped more than 90.1 million iPhones worldwide. In addition, Apple’s sales are usually cyclical, which peaks in the fourth quarter of each year. And in the third quarter of 2021, Apple shipped 50.4 million units.
Having observed the fluctuation in sales, the constant ups and downs of Apple and Samsung smartphones are evident. While some other brands also came into play, it became challenging to stand up to Apple and Samsung’s total sales and popularity worldwide.
Global Smartphone Shipments Market Share (%)
| Brands | Q4 2020 | Q1 2021 | Q2 2021 | Q3 2021 | Q4 2021 | Q1 2022 | Q2 2022 | Q3 2022 |
| Samsung | 16% | 22% | 18% | 20% | 19% | 23% | 21% | 21% |
| Apple | 21% | 17% | 15% | 14% | 22% | 18% | 16% | 16% |
Our Takeaway
Overall, while the bittersweet relationship between Apple and Samsung combines rivalry and dependency, there’s no doubt both of these brands are incredibly formidable in their distinctive ways. You may see new smartphone companies rise, but you probably won’t see them match up with either of these two brands any time soon. However, the possible collaborative efforts between Apple and Samsung in the near future have a high probability of becoming a contributing factor and opening new doors of innovation and boundless success.
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