HTC says Samsung used its position as a supplier to gain a competitive edge

HTC's president of North Asia, Jack Tong, probably won't be getting a card from Samsung during this year's holiday season. Tong accused the Korean manufacturer of using its position as an HTC supplier to gain a competitive advantage over the Taiwan based firm. Tong says that this took place when Samsung was supplying AMOLED panels to HTC for the HTC Desire, which was launched in the first quarter of 2010.

In Taipei for a local forum on mobile broadband, Tong went on to say that once the device was "welcomed" by both customers and carriers, Samsung turned the spigot off and stopped supplying the panels to HTC. The executive said that the handset manufacturer learned a lesson from that. "We found that key component supply can be used as a competitive weapon," he said. Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs said at the beginning of the year, that it hoped to help local companies develop their own supply chain to avoid situations like this one.

A similar situation occurred during the same year with Verizon's HTC DROID Incredible. Originally offered with an AMOLED screen, the phone was pulled from Verizon and brought back with a Sony-made Super LCD panel after Samsung said it could no longer supply HTC with the AMOLED screen. As it turned out, Samsung was said to be diverting production of the screen to its own handsets.

source: FocusTaiwan via BGR