TECH COMPANY
APRIL 14, 2021
samsung : from a grocery store to a tech giant
Hard to imagine this company started from just a trading grocery store but Samsung proves there is unlimited possibility in life.
Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chul (1910 – 1987) on March 1, 1938. It was a grocery trading store. The word Samsung means “three stars” in Korean. It started as a trading company exporting various products from South Korea to Beijing.
Today Samsung Electronics is one of the world’s largest technology company with various electronic products including, cell phones, refrigerator, washing machine, TV and many more as well as high technology machines. Samsung now is a South Korean multinational conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul.
Jumping back to the past, with only 30.000 won (about US $27), Lee Byung-chul started Samsung in a city called Taegu in 1938. It was just a trading store, trading and exporting goods such as dried Korean fish, rice, noodles and vegetables with 40 employees. The Communist Invasion in 1950 caused big trouble for his business. He was forced to leave and start over again in Suwon, in 1951. After the Korean War, Lee expanded his business into textiles and opened the largest woolen mill in Korea.
Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s Samsung stepped to other business including life insurance and textiles. In 1969, Samsung Electronics was founded and started producing consumer electronic products at first, mostly TV. Their first Black and White TV went into sale in the market in 1970. Now, Samsung Electronics focusing their business on four areas : digital media, semiconductor, telecommunication network and LCD digital appliances.
The various components inside your non-Samsung electronic goods could be produced by Samsung.
During 1970’s, Samsung expanded their business to petrochemical and other fields. They also started making washing machines, microwaves and other house hold electronics in this period.
In the 1980’s decade, Samsung began producing color TVs, personal computers, video players and tape players. They also started exporting the products to North America at this period. This made their products had greater exposure to the world and opened up for bigger market prospect.
In the early 1990’s, Samsung started making memory and hard drives for personal computers. This is one of their most important steps where these products are still big parts of their business today. During mid 1990’s Samsung launched their first mobile phones lineup. This was the start of something big in the future for Samsung, although report said that one of the mobile phones did not work when it first came out in 1995.
After that incident, Samsung began to develop better mobile phones and released one of its first Internet-ready phones in 1999. Their mobile phone division grows very fast and becoming one of the very big players in mobile phones industry today. It is Samsung’s most profitable business to date.
The Samsung Galaxy S series was introduced at the Mobile World Congress in 2010, It is the Samsung’s flagship Android phone lineup and ultimately remains as one of the best smartphones in the market. With this product, Samsung started to build a direct competition with Apple iPhones and it has been always these two brands to compare side by side by the consumers for years.
Besides making high quality mobile phones, Samsung also continue to produce state-of-the-art electronic consumer goods. From late 1990’s to mid 2000’s they launched digital TVs and HD TVs as well as home entertainment electronic products including Blu-Ray players – a new format of video technology at the time. Samsung makes some of the best TVs in the market today. And this caused big troubles for giants Japanese TV maker such as Sony, Panasonic or Sharp as their products were outnumbered in sales for the last decade.
Today Samsung makes more smartphones than any competitor in the industry. Their various electronics products and components can also be found across the world. Chips and other electronic components inside your computers, smartphones or TVs could be produced by Samsung although it is from different brand.
Starting from a grocery store selling noodles, Samsung is now a behemoth of business entity. A British mount climber took his Galaxy S II to Mount Everest with him and the smartphone picking up signals in extreme conditions. The smartphone functioned normally at the height of 8.850 meters above the sea level ! This demonstrated the production quality of the phone.
Another example of Samsung octopus-like business is the impressive Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai. Construction of the building was entrusted to Samsung Engineering and Construction.
related post