Samsung to Release Tablet, Challenge iPad

J.K. Shin, head of Samsung’s mobile communications division, during a press conference in Barcelona. (Credit: Associated Press)

Samsung, which supplies the processor for the iPad, will take advantage of "a new market and new demand."

Samsung plans to make a tablet PC to compete with Apple’s iPad, according to J.K. Shin, president of Samsung’s mobile-communications division, Bloomberg reports.

Apple’s tablet computer “will create a new market and new demand,” Shin revealed at a press conference yesterday in Barcelona, Spain. “We will respond.”

Samsung provides the processor that powers the iPad, but there’s no conflict of interest:

“At the same time, they [Apple] are our customer and we are the supplier of components to them,” Shin says. “This is normal, we have to compete in the market”

Shin says it is “too early” to reveal Samsung’s exact plans.

Samsung, the world’s second-largest mobile-phone maker, is developing a 1 GHz-processor handset, called the “Wave,” that is expected to boost its smartphone business.