Samsung shrugs off legal woes

MAKER OF TELLIES, Samsung seems to be doing jolly well for itself despite its legal troubles.

The outfit faces a nightmare year of litigation on charges of patent infringement and price-fixing.

However according to Business Week, Samsung is making a killing.

Analysts say the outfit's legal disputes will only have a "very small" impact on the company's financial results and businesses over the next year.

The outfit is expected to make more than $10 bn and even if it has to make large payouts to make lawyers go away it will hardly dent this profit. Stock prices fell a bit yesterday when Samsung was sued by the Washington Research Foundation for using patented Bluetooth technology without permission.

It is already under investigation by antitrust regulators in South Korea, the US, and Japan, for possible price fixing of liquid-crystal display panels.

But as Business Week points out when you are a non-stop cash machine like Samsung is these days, such problems are far from life-threatening. The biggest money earner for Samsung is DRAM chips and it controls more than a third of the market. This market is expected to be worth $40 billion in 2007, so what is a few hundred million between friends or litigants. µ