Smartphones had been Samsung's kingdom the past several quarter, while tablets were ruled by Apple. However, in terms of user satisfaction, Samsung has crossed over and also dominated the world of tablets.

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The latest survey by JD Power released over the weekend said that the South Korean tech giant beat its Cupertino-based competitor by just 2 points, scoring 835 while Apple got 833.

JD Power actually listed five tablet makers in its power circle chart, namely Samsung, Acer, Amazon (Kindle), Apple (iPad) and Asus. The chart had six criteria, namely Overall Satisfaction, Performance, Ease of Use, Physical Design, Tablet Features and Cost.

Apple fans may raise their eyebrows at how Samsung beat the tablet king for the first time in the satisfaction survey when the latter actually won in four categories of Performance, Ease of Use, Physical Design and Tablet Features, while Samsung won only one - Cost, which was based on weighed cost and comprised 16 per cent of the overall score.

Kirk Parsons, senior director of telecommunications services of JD Power, explained to TechCrunch that the difference between the iPad's price category scores and Samsung's were significant to offset the advantage enjoyed by Apple in the four other categories.

In computing for the cost, which covered 10 Samsung tablets, including the Nexus 10 16GB and 32GB, released in 2012 with price tags ranging from $199 to $599, JD Power did not limit itself to the actual retail price of the tablets but included satisfaction of the respondent with the fairness of the price for the tablet.

In turn, seven Apple tablets were listed with price range from $329 to $699.

Mr Parsons pointed out that Apple charges $100 to double the memory of their tablets, while Samsung only charges $50.

Despite the slight edge enjoyed by Samsung tablets, JD Power still recommended Apple tablets for those in search of best performance, ease of use, physical design and tablet features, but for those whose finances are limited, then Samsung is their bet.

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Meanwhile, in the smartphone department, Samsung continued to enjoy being the market leader as its smartphone shipment to China jumped 156 per cent year-over-year during the third quarter. Apple was back in the top five smartphone makers in China for the same quarter with the shipment of the iPhone 5S, boosting its market share to 8 per cent due to a 32 per cent year-over-year hike in shipments, data from research firm Canalys said.

Canalys analyst Nicole Peng said the iPhone 5S was the main driver of Apple's higher share in the China market due to the high demand for that model, particularly the gold-coloured device that sold for $1,630 in the country's grey market, PC World reports.

But the king is still Samsung with a 21 per cent market share, followed by Lenovo at 13 per cent, Yulong Computer Telecommunication (a local handset vendor) at 11 per cent and Huawei Technologies at 9 per cent.

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