Samsung is gearing up to develop its own electric car, following rumors that Apple was building one.
Samsung acquired Magna Steyr and all of its assets and employees for an undisclosed amount. Magna Steyr was a division of Magna International, based in Austria, and is reportedly one of the largest suppliers of car parts in North America.
Samsung actually has a division for producing electric car parts, Samsung SDI, which supplies BMW with batteries. Merging Magna Steyr with Samsung SDI helps to strengthen the division. Although this acquisition might just be to expand business as a parts supplier for other companies, it could also be in reaction to Apple's recent activities.
Apple has recently been working to gain experienced personnel from companies such as Tesla and A123, both of which are heavily invested in the development of electric cars, and batteries for electric cars. As a result, there has been much speculation that Apple might be building an electric car.
If that is indeed Apple's goal, it wouldn't be surprising for Samsung to do the same. Samsung is well known today for its electronics business, but it has divisions working in several other areas including engineering, chemicals, insurance, ship building, machine tools, medicine, security and hotels.
Already having expertise in several areas of engineering, Samsung has great potential to move into producing vehicles, and is almost certainly in a better position to do so than Apple. For now, it is actually unknown if either Apple or Samsung will make a move into electric cars at all—it's all been speculation up to this point—but evidence is mounting that indicates a race between Apple and Samsung in yet another market.
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