Oh, Samsung. We know you have a complicated relationship with Apple, building components for them with the one hand, suing with the other. But can’t you stop mouthing off about the components you’re building them about Cupertino’s top-secret upcoming projects? Keep this up and you’re likely to find yourself wearing concrete shoes at the bottom of the local reservoir.
Samsung’s latest stupid and vague mouthing off comes from an anonymous Samsung executive speaking to The Korea Times, who says that Apple has committed to buying about $9.7 billion worth of components from Uncle Sammy this year alone.
And amongst those components? iPad mini displays.
”The contract is expected to rise to $11 billion by the end of this year as Apple is planning to release a smaller iPad, probably with a 7.85-inch screen, and to sell more of its MacBook Air PCs using Samsung’s faster solid state drive (SSD) storage,” the official said.
Apple CEO Tim Cook agreed with Samsung Electronics Chief Operating Officer (COO) Lee Jay-yong to use the Korean firm’s components until the end of 2014 during Lee’s visit to his office in Cupertino, Calif., late last year.
What will this new smaller iPad’s display look like? Don’t expect retina, but according to the report, Samsung will be providing it with new PLS-based LCDs, and Apple has apparently expressed interest in OLED technology, and would like to use it if Samsung can make enough of them, but Apple doesn’t think Samsung can swing it anytime soon. Which is probably an understatement.
Take this all with a grain of salt. Apple’s called 7-inch tablets “tweeners” dismissively in the past, and the Korea Time doesn’t name their source. Still, if this report is right, we could see an iPad mini soon… maybe later this year, but my money banks on debuting with the fourth-gen iPad, if it’s going to debut at all.
[via MacRumors]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
7 responses to “Another Samsung Executive Mouths Off About Apple Making An iPad Mini”
I think that the Koreans is just happy to spread som uncertainty and doubt among Apple customers. They can’t touch the iPad in any way and the only thing they can do is to spread a bit of doubt. Maybe they think that the customers will look at their stuff instead
my god your articles are so easily identifiable by your lack of professionalism and clever style. please please give up. also, to stay relevant, i hope an ipad mini does not become reality.
Given the circmstances I wouldn’t trust anything that comes from the mouth of Samsung.
A waterproof 6.5″ iPod Touch, transparent solar display with 1024×768 resolution so old iPad apps are not wasted… Secondary touch panel on the backside, used for scrolling the page/image only… iPod Touch was intended for music and films without GSM operators’ mumbojumbo, now add e-novels and serious games to that usage pattern…
Haha! Just kidding… A solar/kinetic waterproof iPod Nano with Bluetooth 4.0 should be within the probable-prototypable-profitable triangle by now…
Time will tell…
iPad Maxi? …Johnnnnn… John, John, John. That’s really bad, John. SMH
Could it be that this isn’t going to be an iPad, but a “controller” which might be named iTV or AppleTV, or whatever?
To me, the killer TV product isn’t a TV with iCloud built-in, it’s just an app that not only works (IR receiver) with my TV, but also controls my DVR.
Meehhhhh, it’s probably just the iPad Mini – which is why they named the latest iPad just “iPad.”
An iPad mini could easily replace the iPod Touch.