Seoul, Jul 26 (IANS): South Korean tech giant Samsung has reportedly roped in semiconductor expert Kim Woo-pyeong from Apple, who will serve as the company's director for a new packaging solution center.

The company established the Packaging Solution Center in Device Solution America (DSA) in July and hired Woo-pyeong as its director, reports Business Korea.

After studying at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Woo-pyeong worked for Texas Instruments and Qualcomm before working for Apple for about nine years in 2014.

Experts said that the appointment is somewhat unusual considering the special relationship between Samsung and Apple, as the two cooperate and compete with each other at the same time, the report said.

It is not easy to find similar cases except for Samsung's recruitment in 2012 of Luc Julia, who oversaw Siri development at Apple for nearly a year, it added.

Packaging is one of the fields where Samsung Electronics is focusing on technology development.

As the difficulty of developing ultra-micro fabrication processes increases, chipmakers are moving toward enhancing packaging technology to surmount physical limitations.