The good news: Korean-based Samsung proudly announced that its Galaxy S II hit 10 million channel sales despite its short availability, having been launched just last April. In July, the company announced 5 million units sold, even though it only became available to the US just weeks ago.

Though channel sales of 10 million in such a short period of time are pretty impressive, it’s still different from end-user sales. Nevertheless, it’s a powerful mobile device boasting a dual-core 1.2 GHz Exynos CPU, Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 1 GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel camera and 16 GB of storage.

The Bad

The legal brawl between Samsung and Apple is not going to cool down anytime soon. They’ve been fighting each other in different courts across the world since last April over smartphone and tablet patents.  Apple even managed to get the upper hand in Germany, and got Samsung blocked from selling its latest tablets there.  It has also indefinitely delayed the launch of Galaxy tablets in Australia.

The Ugly

Apple Inc. is one of the biggest customers of Samsung as a chip manufacturer. Samsung earned $5.7 billion or 4 percent of its total sales from Apple alone. Considering this whole skirmish over patents going on for months now, Samsung is on the verge of losing its biggest client. Apple is likely to shift its sights to other manufacturers.

“Samsung’s tablet business will be most affected and its chip business will also take a hit as Apple moves to diversify away from Samsung to the likes of Toshiba,” said Nho Geun-chang, an analyst at HMC Investment Securities.

“But taking passive steps for fear of losing its biggest customer will slow down strong growth momentum at its telecoms business, which Samsung doesn’t want to see as the business is set to become the biggest earnings generator this year and make up for weakening chip profits. It’ll be a costly battle for Samsung.”

As the mobile industry matures, the downfall of one company can signal trouble for another. Verizon Wireless decided to step in to help Samsung and asked a Californiacourt not to ban Samsung’s Android-powered 4G, because it is detrimental to the future of Verizon and its customers.  Apple filed for a preliminary injunction with the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Samsung’s Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G and Droid Charge smartphones, as well as its Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet last July.

“Because of factors that have little to do with the patented technology, there will be few alternatives to the Samsung 4G devices in the near term,” Verizon said. “It takes considerable time and effort to develop any 4G product — normally, much longer than a year. Any requirement that Samsung redesign its products in light of an injunction may cause long delays before the redesigned 4G devices are available to consumers.”