We know that Apple and Samsung are not fans of each other (although Apple might begrudgingly view Samsung as necessary), it seems that they are not alone. According to a report from Focus Taiwan, apparently the president of HTC North Asia, Jack Tong, was quoted as saying that Samsung is exploiting their position as a components supplier to sabotage HTC’s smartphone operations, which in turn led to a disruption of HTC’s sales. Tong claims that this began back in 2010 when HTC developed the Desire smartphone using a Samsung AMOLED display.
Tong notes that as soon as sales of the Desire began to take off, Samsung supposedly “strategically declined” to fill orders for the display component, which ultimately forced HTC to redesign the phone. Tong was quoted as saying, “We found that key component supply can be used as a competitive weapon.” While we can’t say for sure if Samsung is indeed guilty of doing that, it’s exactly those sentiments which makes it understandable as to why Apple could be looking to reduce their reliance on Samsung as their main supplier/manufacturer of some of their components.