Lee Byung-chul, a local businessman,
launched Samsung, a supermarket trade firm in Daegu, South Korea, in 1938.
According to the creator of Samsung,
the korean hanja term samsung means "three stars." Three refers to
something large, many, and strong, but stars refer to something everlasting or
eternal, such as stars in the sky.
The enterprise traded pasta, dried
fish, fruits and vegetables, and other local items in and around the city. They
sent their items to China following the Korean War in the early 1950s. Byung
chul's grocery trade firm also went into textiles, creating Korea's largest
woollen mill. Pyeongchol's emphasis on industrialisation helped revitalise
Korea's economy amid a difficult financial moment for the country.
The South Korean government fostered
indigenous enterprises by providing cheap funding and shielding them from
competition. Samsung was one of the enterprises reinforced by the table's
backing from big domestic corporations.
Since the early 1960s, acquiring a
series of loans and other business backing, Samsung Electronics was ultimately
founded in 1969. establishing electronic emphasis units inside the organization
Samsung Electronics began selling
one of its earliest electronic items, black & white televisions, in 1971. Samsung
began with washing machines and refrigerators before developing and
mass-producing colour televisions, while maintaining its black and white models
until the 1970s. To be a part of these developing sectors, Samsung established
subsidiaries such as Samsung Shipbuilding, Samsung Heavy Industries, and
Samsung Precision Company They also started working in the chemical and
petrochemical sectors.Samsung Electronics purchased Hankook Semiconductor in
1974, establishing them as the industry leader in memory chips. in the early
1990s, a position they held and expanded upon to become the world's largest
semiconductor producer.
Even most Apple iPhones currently
employ Samsung memory chips. Samsung began exporting household electrical
equipment to foreign nations in the 1970s, and by 1978, the company had
produced four million black and white televisions, the most in the world at the
time. The next year, Samsung established its first foreign office in the United
States.
In 1984, it sold its first VCRs to
the United States, and it also changed its name to Samsung Electronics Company
Ltd, with sales exceeding 1 trillion won (equal to 3.4 trillion won).
Approximately 3 billion US dollars now.
Byung-chul died of lung cancer in
1987. Byung-son chul's Lee Kun-hee took over his father's position, walking
over controversy and corruption to transform Samsung into the global power it
is today. He became frustrated with the company's reputation for producing low-quality
goods, and in 1993 Cohen told his employees to change everything except their
wives and children. As a result, the company underwent a major transformation,
rebranding itself as a top player in the manufacturing of quality technology.
When Samsung's first mobile phone models were produced two years later, they were once again reported to be plagued with faults. The turning point occurred when Kony visited the phone manufacturing plant and requested that the 100 000 to 150 000 phones in production be burned on the factory floor.
Following the total devastation of
the ridicule-generating phones, the revival of the Samsung brand was lauded as
a classic instance of effective rebranding strategy. As predicted, Samsung
actually created better mobile phones after the very successful rebranding
plan. Though Nokia dominated the mobile phone industry, it introduced the
world's first mp3 mobile phone in 1999.
Samsung continues to upgrade phones
in the 1990s. By 2002 Samsung's suit100 the first mobile phone to use film
transistor active matrix LCD was one of the best selling phones selling 12
million handsets worldwide when Cohen he's decided to adapt to a digital
program Samsung targeted an area where it didn't have to play catch-up. So, in
1998, Samsung launched the world's first digital television. However, the
business's quick growth in the 1990s was not without controversy, as various
bribery scandals and patent infringement litigation dogged the corporation. However,
none of these hampered Samsung's expansion. Meanwhile, in the year 2000,
Samsung developed new television technologies aimed at improving customer
watching experiences.
Samsung's global sales reached $100
billion in 2007, and by the end of 2008, it had eclipsed its previous
reputation for producing clunky black and white televisions. In 2008, Cohen was
found guilty of tax fraud and embezzlement and resigned from Samsung. He
received a three-year suspended sentence and a $100 million fine. However,
Samsung maintained its position as the world's leading electronic centre.
Samsung unveiled its first Android-powered gadget, the Samsung Galaxy S7 500,
in 2009. Users of the first galaxy criticised Samsung for the phone's lack of
firmware upgrades, which was released nine months after the original galaxy.
The Galaxy S was Samsung's first
Android smartphone to achieve broad commercial success, selling over 25 million
devices. South Korean President Lee Myeong bok finally pardoned khon he, and
after receiving a special amnesty, Samsung's former chairman returned to lead
the firm after a two-year hiatus.
After Samsung made record sales in
2009 later in 2011 it was announced south korea would host the 2018 winter Olympics
as the demand for galaxy smartphones continued to rise with the company's
disgraced chairman returned to the helm a book named think Samsung was
published in 2010 the book was written by Samsung's former chief legal counsel Kim
Jung-Chul it made astonishing claims about khon he's corruption alleging he
stole around 10 billion dollars from Samsung subsidiaries bribed government
officials and destroyed evidence notwithstanding the allegations stated in the
book.
Most of south Korea's mainstream
media refused to run the story preceding an attack on Samsung as an attack on
south Korea itself meanwhile Samsung continued to focus on new products after
the release of apple's new ipad Samsung launched the galaxy tab in 2010 to
compete but it wasn't received well and was dubbed an oversized. Smartphone and
ill-fitting clothes it used android 2.2 with no tablet optimization in spring
2011 apple began to litigate against Samsung in patent infringement suits
around the design of Samsung's Smartphones by Sctober the two tech giants were
entangled in 19 ongoing cases across 10 countries eventually the protracted
legal disputes between Samsung and apple were settled in 2012 a u.s court ruled
that Samsung had infringed the copyright of the design of apple's iphone and
apple was awarded million dollars three years later however in a fresh twist in
2016 the supreme court sided with Samsung who had been seeking to cut back 399 million
dollars of its previous debt as reported by the guardian not withstanding the
dent from the copyright infringement ruling.
In 2013, Samsung was declared the
world's largest tech firm by the annual Fortune 500 list, which ranks the
world's greatest businesses by sales. Samsung occupied the position five places
above its rival Apple, posting revenues of 178.6 billion dollars and earnings
of 20.6 billion dollars.
In 2016 the company permanently
stopped the production of its high-end galaxy note 7 Smartphones after
receiving reports of the phones catching fire because of faults with their batteries
this decision cost Samsung 5.3 billion dollars and immensely damaged the
company's reputation apparently the Samsung company wasn't getting any respite
any time soon their tribulations continued in 2017 when bbc reported that the
vice chairman and heir to the samsung empire lee jae yong was found guilty of
bribery and cronyism he was sentenced to five years in jail. Though he rejected
the allegations in August of that year, the sentence was lowered and the
remainder of the jail sentences were suspended by the Seoul High Court six
months later in February 2018. After the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, Samsung
attempted to move on by revealing a prototype of the world's first foldable
smartphone before the end of 2018.
However, just days before the Galaxy
Fold's advertised release date, the tech firm postponed the launch due to
broken screens. Users reportedly removed a film they thought was a protective
layer of the phone, but it turned out to be a part of it after Samsung made
some complete improvements. The roughly $2,000 item was released in September
2019.
Despite being plagued by
controversies, scandals, and setbacks over the years, Samsung unveiled the
world's largest mobile manufacturing plant in Noida, India, in 2018 with
visitors including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Conclusion:
Samsung
has a market capitalization of $307.23 billion as of November 2022. According
to our calculations, this places Samsung as the world's 24th most valuable
corporation by market capitalization.