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.

Julie Jacobson - Editor-at-large, CE Pro

Julie Jacobson is co-founder of EH Publishing and currently spends most of her time writing for CE Pro, mostly in the areas of home automation, networked A/V and the business of home systems integration. She majored in Economics at the University of Michigan, earned an MBA from the University of Texas at Austin, and has never taken a journalism class in her life. Julie is a washed-up Ultimate Frisbee player with the scars to prove it. Follow her on Twitter @juliejacobson.