Is QUALCOMM, Inc. (QCOM) In or Out of Samsung’s Galaxy S IV? – Apple Inc. (AAPL)

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Samsung has also been aggressively gunning for Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) over the past year with targeted ads. The company will likely come after the iPhone maker again, highlighting the fact that the iPhone 5’s A6 processor is a dual-core chip, while ignoring the fact that the cores inside are new custom designs with major performance gains. These cores are codenamed “Swift” and are comparable in performance to QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM)’s Krait cores.

The South Korean company will probably also neglect the fact that most software and apps currently aren’t optimized to take full advantage of all those cores, but marketing is marketing.

All’s not lost
Still, even for the models that don’t pack QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) Snapdragons, the company will still probably turn up as the discrete baseband supplier, so all’s not lost. Samsung’s been working on its own LTE basebands, but QUALCOMM, Inc. (NASDAQ:QCOM) still has a significant technological lead.

The Galaxy S IV will intensify competition with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL), and Cupertino’s response is at least a couple months away. Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is still the top U.S. vendor, selling 17.7 million iPhones (34% market share) in the fourth quarter. That topped Samsung’s 16.8 million (32.3% market share), but only by a hair.

This year may play out like last year. Samsung pulled ahead by mid-2012 due to a Galaxy S III launch and an Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) slowdown ahead of the iPhone 5. Samsung may enjoy a strong second quarter, but Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s next iPhone(s) will put it back in the lead come the third quarter.

The article Is Qualcomm In or Out of Samsung’s Galaxy S IV? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Evan Niu, CFA.

Fool contributor Evan Niu, CFA, owns shares of Apple and Qualcomm. The Motley Fool recommends Apple and NVIDIA. The Motley Fool owns shares of Apple and Qualcomm.

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