Essay On The History Of Samsung

Overview, History, and Current Structure of Samsung

For the past 70 years, Samsung Group has been expanding its business through dedication and a corporate ethos of a strong work ethic. Over the years, Samsung has diversified it's business with holdings in the chemical industry, the hospitality industry, health care, high finance, clothing, among others. This includes a vast network of affiliated businesses with over sixty subsidiary groups. Samsung even has the distinction of owning Korea's first amusement park.

Byung-chull Lee was born in 1910 and at the age of 28, in 1938, he founded what is now known as Samsung Group. At that time, the company was small and primarily sold food items and groceries. At the conclusion of the Korean War, he acquired a small refinery for sugar and a mill for wool in the early 1950's. In an effort to grow and diversify the company, Lee created Samsung Electronics in 1969. However due to a poor Korean economy, little capital investment, and low quality electronics, the growth of Samsung electronics was slow. In order to compete at all, at that time, Samsung largely assembled products from foreign parts. Initially, there was a tremendous gap between the quality of Samsung products and that of their Japanese competitors. For example, while Japanese manufacturers were selling color televisions, Samsung was still making black and white televisions. Over time, however, Samsung Electronics was able to adapt foreign technology and expand their product offering substantially. They eventually branched out into home appliances, kitchen electronics, as well as televisions and VCRs.

However, all of this growth in the early days of Samsung Electronics pales in comparison to the exponential growth seen after t...

... middle of paper ...

...en in a niche market. These phones did well because some of them strike a chord with consumers even though it is not easy to predict market tendencies. In addition, in the digital era, the life cycle of electronic goods is getting shorter. For this reason, Samsung has decided to develop many different and new mobile phones every year in an effort to follow the trend as fast as it can.

For the past 10 years, Samsung has displayed enormous growth as a company. Before the turn of the millennium, electronics manufacturer Sony had twice the market capitalization as Samsung, however three years after this, Samsung has surpassed the once world's largest electronics company and the gap between the two companies continues to expand. According to Samsung's 2013 general shareholders meeting, net profit was up 13.5% from 2012 and the future continues to look bright for Samsung.