Korean regulators could investigate whether Apple broke competition laws by buying memory from Samsung at below market rates.

Samsung is widely thought to be Apple's key memory supplier, a lucrative deal given the recent launch of the flash-based iPod Nano.

The Korean Fair Trade Commission chairman Kang Chul-kyu said he was considering an investigation into whether Apple and Samsung had behaved improperly, according to Yonhap news here.

Observers have questioned how much more Apple would have to pay by switching from mini hard drives to Flash memory for use in the iPod nano. Flash memory costs almost twice as much as the eqivalent storage on a disc.®

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