Samsung is a Multi-national South-Korean Company founded in 1938. It was originally meant to be a trading company. Right now it has a number of holding companies and subsidiaries united under the brand name of Samsung. It is the largest South Korean conglomerate.
Samsung History
Samsung started in 1938 as a small trading company located in Su-dong near Daegu city.It was founded by Lee Byung-chul. He had only forty employees and the company’s major business was production and distribution of groceries within the city.
In 1947, as the company began to grow Lee put up their office in Seoul. He soon started a sugar refinery which also succeeded in a very short span of time. Lee was a very ambitious person and in 1954 built the largest woollen mill in Korea located in the suburbs of Daegu city.
Soon he had ventured into various other sectors like insurance, retail and securities. He was a firm believer in industrialization and wanted that Samsung Group to become the industry leader in almost all the sectors. In the 1960’s the Samsung Group entered the electronics industry confidently.
It was relying on the huge capital that it had at disposal for making new innovative products. Very soon Samsung was able to release its first product which was a black and white television set. By now it has more than 6 divisions each focussing on individual products like the semiconductor, telecommunications, hardware, etc.
Success in the Following Years
Soon it acquired telecommunications giant Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin in 1980. They started producing telephone, fax machines, switchboards with great success and created the base for their large-scale productions in the years to come. In the 1980’s all these production units came under one company named Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
With their founder’s death they did not lose his philosophy of large-scale expansion and development. They invested millions of dollars in research for better technology for their electronics products. They started building manufacturing plants in places like New York, Texas, London, Portugal etc.
Samsung also focussed on its construction company and was able to grab big projects like building the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building and also the Petronas Towers in Malaysia. In the 1990’s they refocused themselves and put electronics, constructions and chemicals on the top of their priority list.
Subsidiary compaies of Samsung Group:
Samsung Electronics
Samsung C&T Corporation
Samsung Heavy Industries
Samsung SDS
Samsung Life Insurance
Samsung Fire & Marine Insurance
Cheil Worldwide
Key people in Samsung Electronics
The Reigns of Power in the Samsung Electronics, their most successful Subsidiary now lies in the hands of:
Jong-Kyun Shin – President & CEO
Boo-Keun Yoon – President & CEO
Oh-Hyun Kwon – Vice Chairman & CEO
Lee Kun-hee – Chairman of Samsung Electronics
Milestones
In 1992 it became the sole leader in the production of memory chips in the World and was second behind Intel in the chip-making industry. In 1995 their years of research paid off as they were able to create the first LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) screen. This revolutionised the television hardware industry and brought millions of dollars in profits for Samsung as all the other companies had to pay Samsung royalties to use their technology.
In 2001 their subsidiary Samsung Techwin became supplier for specific engine parts for Boeing 787 Dreamliner and Airbus A380. In the beginning of 2012 it created history when it overtook Nokia as the mobile phone maker with the highest production in the World.
