Move opens door for rivals

The resignation of Apple’s chief executive Steve Jobs has opened the door for rival Samsung Electronics at a crucial time in the battle for smartphone supremacy in salesrooms and courtrooms around the world.

Mr Jobs passed the reins to his right-hand man Tim Cook last night, saying he could no longer fulfil his duties, raising fears the health of the Silicon Valley icon had worsened.

While Apple and analysts highlighted Mr Cook's experience, as well as Mr Jobs' new role as chairman and the company's extensive management bench, his departure will cause ripples across the Pacific at South Korea's Samsung.

More than any other firm, Samsung's fortunes are tied to Apple, both as a competitor and supplier of components.

The companies are fierce rivals, with Samsung's Galaxy range of smartphones and tablet computers running on Google's Android operating system seen as the main competitor to Apple's game-changing iPhones and iPads.

The Korean giant has taken big strides and is backing itself to unseat Apple.

When Samsung group executives asked Hong Won-pyo, executive vice president of Samsung's mobile division, at their weekly meeting yesterday if Samsung could overtake Apple in the smartphone market any time soon, he told them he was confident, according to a person at the meeting. Hong was speaking just hours before Mr Jobs made his announcement to quit as CEO.

Apple and Samsung are scrapping for top spot in the smartphone market, having overtaken the market leader for the past decade, Finland's Nokia, in the second quarter.

Samsung's smartphone sales soared more than 500 per cent in the second quarter, easily eclipsing Apple's 142 per cent growth, though Apple sold about 1 million more units. Nokia sales fell 30 per cent.

News of Mr Jobs' move helped Samsung shares rise 2.5 per cent in Seoul today. The broader Korean market was up 0.6 per cent.

Samsung still trails badly in tablet sales, where Apple racked up 14 million iPad sales in the first half, versus analysts' sales estimates of about 7.5 million Samsung tablet products for all of 2011.

Samsung may also move more aggressively in closing the gap in software, one of its weakest links, after Chairman Lee Kun-hee asked the firm's top managers recently to come up with various measures including M&A to raise its software prowess, according to South Korean media.

Mr Lee has been obsessed with raising Samsung's competitiveness by deepening its patent pool, talent and software abilities and might be tempted to look more closely for opportunities to take on Apple in earnest.

But the South Korean conglomerate also supplied Apple with about $5.7 billion in components last year, some 4 per cent of Samsung's total sales.

Apple's portion grew to 5.8 percent of Samsung's sales in the first-quarter, driven by booming iPad and iPhone sales, which Samsung supplies chips for, along with Japan's Toshiba.

Samsung and Apple, along with many of the other players in the fast-growing mobile devices market, are also engaged in a costly and acrimonious patent and copyright battles around the globe.

Just yesterday, Apple won a preliminary injunction in a Dutch court stopping Samsung from marketing three smartphone models in some European companies.

Reuters