Samsung is very good at keeping up with its competition, even if most of the time they're just reacting to rumours and speculation.

With speculation rife that Apple will be working on a car at some point in the next few years, Samsung are looking to get a head start by going into talks to acquire a 4% stake of Chinese electric car maker, BYD.

Last December, Samsung set up a team within the company to look at getting into the automotive space.

As the smartphone market begins to slow down, the world's largest chip maker is hoping more and more electric and smart cars use their chips, but it's hard to ignore the Apple influence here.

For so long now, Samsung and Apple have been at each other's throats over ideas and innovation. Apple has taken Samsung to court multiple times over the Korean tech giant infringing on their patents and designs.

Over the past few years, Samsung has started to move away from retroactively competing with Apple to now getting the upper hand by pouring money and resources into future areas of growth.

Transport will be the next area that major tech companies get involved in. Google is already going headfirst into transport with its driverless car efforts.

What Apple is working on is still pretty much unknown at this point. It's hard to trust any rumour about what they're working on. As we've seen before with the Apple television rumours, the information can be very wrong.

Samsung aren't exactly jumping the gun, they've explained that it's investing in BYD to use their chips, but a stake in an established electric car company in a few years time, when Apple and Google make their intentions more well known, could pay off very well for Samsung.