The announcement of the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus was "lackluster," in the view of Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen, who expressed skepticism that the problems with Samsung's flagship smart phone will lead to an outflowing of customers to Apple.

"We've chosen our battlegrounds already," Nguyen said, suggesting that U.S. users are mostly either in the Android an iOS camps. Shifting from one to the other is "at the least annoying" and involves relearning the quirks of a new platform and accounting for apps that have been bought or downloaded.

"I feel it's more likely that the Samsung incident will push people towards other Android makers like LG more so than towards Apple," Nguyen said. Shifts to a new platform could be more pronounced in emerging markets with burgeoning middle classes who may not have been able to afford iPhones before.

Eoin Treacy's view

The app ecosystem of various platforms represents a significant hurdle to moving from an iOS based phone to Android. That represents a major incentive for companies like Apple and Google to encourage as many programmers as possible to develop apps for their respective languages. Google’s announcement in July that it plans to fund education for up to 2 million programmers in India is a direct reflection of that theme.

Nevertheless, the recall of Samsung’s new flagship phone, due to exploding batteries, is good news for Apple. The share has now bounced from the region of the trend mean and a sustained move above $110 would break the medium-term progression of lower rally highs which would signal a return to medium-term demand dominance.

Samsung Electronics has been affected both by the recall and North Korean nuclear tests. The share pulled back sharply today to close most of its overextension relative to the trend mean. It will need to find support above, or in the region of, KRW1.4 million if medium-term potential for higher to lateral ranging is to be given the benefit of the doubt.