Apple's buying power relegates Samsung to distant second

Here's another category where Apple and Samsung go head to head: chip buying. And Apple's dominance is expanding rapidly.

Rip off the plastic, metal, and glass on any consumer device, and it's pretty much all chips. And if you're the No. 1 buyer of those chips, as Apple is, that means you hold a lot of sway over global chip manufacturing.

More sway than chip kingpin Samsung (which Apple, ironically, buys lots of chips from). It's well known that Apple has already conquered the smartphone and tablet segments -- but behind the scenes the company is engaging in another kind of conquest: the dominance of the electronics supply chain," Myson Robles-Bruce, an analyst IHS iSuppli, said in a report released today.