1938 to 1970
The headquarters of
Samsung Sanghoe in Daegu in the late 1930s
In 1938,
Lee Byung-chull (1910–1987) of a large landowning family in the
Uiryeong county came to the nearby
Daegu city and founded
Samsung Sanghoe (삼성상회, 三星商會), a small trading company with forty employees located in Su-dong (now Ingyo-dong). It dealt in groceries produced in and around the city and produced its own noodles. The company prospered and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947. When the
Korean War broke out, however, he was forced to leave Seoul and started a sugar refinery in
Busan named
Cheil Jedang. After the war, in 1954, Lee founded
Cheil Mojik and built the plant in Chimsan-dong, Daegu. It was the largest woollen mill ever in the country and the company took on the aspect of a major company.
Samsung diversified into many areas and Lee sought to help establish Samsung as an industry leader in a wide range of enterprises, moving into businesses such as insurance, securities, and retail. Lee placed great importance on industrialization, and focused his economic development strategy on a handful of large domestic conglomerates, protecting them from competition and assisting them financially.
In 1948, Cho Hong-jai (the Hyosung group’s founder) jointly invested in a new company called Samsung Mulsan Gongsa,or the Samsung Trading Corporation, with the Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull. The trading firm grew to become the present-day Samsung C&T Corporation. But after some years Cho and Lee separated due to differences in management between them. He wanted to get up to a 30% group share. After settlement, Samsung Group was separated into Samsung Group and
Hyosung Group,
Hankook Tire, and others.
In the late 1960s, Samsung Group entered into the electronics industry. It formed several electronics-related divisions, such as Samsung Electronics Devices Co., Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., Samsung Corning Co., and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications Co., and made the facility in
Suwon. Its first product was a black-and-white television set.
1970 to 1990
In 1980, Samsung acquired the
Gumi-based
Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin and entered the telecommunications hardware industry. Its early products were switchboards. The facility were developed into the telephone and fax manufacturing systems and became the centre of Samsung's mobile phone manufacturing. They have produced over 800 million mobile phones to date. The company grouped them together under Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. in the 1980s.
After the founder's death in 1987, Samsung Group was separated into four business groups – Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group,
CJ Group and Hansol Group.Shinsegae (discount store, department store) was originally part of Samsung Group, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group (Food/Chemicals/Entertainment/logistics) and the Hansol Group (Paper/Telecom). Today these separated groups are independent and they are not part of or connected to the Samsung Group.
[20] One Hansol Group representative said, "Only people ignorant of the laws governing the business world could believe something so absurd," adding, "When Hansol separated from the Samsung Group in 1991, it severed all payment guarantees and share-holding ties with Samsung affiliates." One Hansol Group source asserted, "Hansol, Shinsegae, and CJ have been under independent management since their respective separations from the Samsung Group." One Shinsegae Department Store executive director said, "Shinsegae has no payment guarantees associated with the Samsung Group."
In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics began to invest heavily in research and development, investments that were pivotal in pushing the company to the forefront of the global electronics industry. In 1982, it built a television assembly plant in Portugal; in 1984, a plant in New York; in 1985, a plant in Tokyo; in 1987, a facility in
England; and another facility in
Austin in 1996. As of 2012, Samsung has invested more than
US$13 billion in the Austin facility, which operates under the name Samsung Austin Semiconductor LLC. This makes the Austin location the largest foreign investment in
Texas and one of the largest single
foreign investments in the
United States.
1990 to 2000
Samsung started to rise as an international corporation in the 1990s.
Samsung's construction branch was awarded a contract to build one of the two
Petronas Towers in
Malaysia,
Taipei 101 in
Taiwan and the
Burj Khalifa in
United Arab Emirates. In 1993,
Lee Kun-hee sold off ten of Samsung Group's subsidiaries, downsized the company, and merged other operations to concentrate on three industries: electronics, engineering, and chemicals. In 1996, the Samsung Group reacquired the
Sungkyunkwan University foundation.
Samsung became the largest producer of memory chips in the world in 1992, and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after
Intel (see
Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year). In 1995, it created its first
liquid-crystal display screen. Ten years later, Samsung grew to be the world's largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal display panels.
Sony, which had not invested in large-size
TFT-LCDs, contacted Samsung to cooperate, and, in 2006,
S-LCD was established as a joint venture between Samsung and Sony in order to provide a stable supply of LCD panels for both manufacturers.
S-LCD was owned by Samsung (50% plus 1 share) and Sony (50% minus 1 share) and operates its factories and facilities in Tangjung, South Korea. As on 26 December 2011 it was announced that Samsung had acquired the stake of Sony in this joint venture.
Compared to other major Korean companies, Samsung survived the
1997 Asian financial crisis relatively unharmed. However,
Samsung Motor was sold to
Renault at a significant loss. As of 2010
[update],
Renault Samsung is 80.1 percent owned by
Renault and 19.9 percent owned by Samsung. Additionally, Samsung manufactured a range of
aircraft from the 1980s to 1990s. The company was founded in 1999 as Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), the result of merger between then three domestic major
aerospace divisions of Samsung Aerospace, Daewoo Heavy Industries, and Hyundai Space and Aircraft Company. However, Samsung still manufactures
aircraft engines and
gas turbines.
[edit] 2000 to 2013
In 2001 Samsung Techwin became the sole supplier of a combustor module for the
Rolls-Royce Trent 900 used by the
Airbus A380, the world's largest passenger airliner.Samsung Techwin is also a revenue-sharing participant in the
Boeing's
787 Dreamliner GEnx engine program.
In 2010, Samsung announced a 10-year growth strategy centred around five businesses. One of these businesses was to be focused on
biopharmaceuticals, to which the Company has committed
₩2.1 trillion.
In December 2011, Samsung Electronics sold its
hard disk drive (HDD) business to
Seagate.
In the first quarter of 2012, Samsung Electronics became the
world's largest mobile phone maker by unit sales, overtaking
Nokia, which had been the market leader since 1998. In the August 21st edition of the
Austin American-Statesman, Samsung confirmed plans to spend 3 to 4 billion dollars converting half of its Austin chip manufacturing plant to a more profitable chip.The conversion should start in early 2013 with production on line by the end of 2013.
On August 24, 2012, 9 U.S jurors
ruled that Samsung had to pay
Apple Incorporated US$1.05 billion dollars in damages for violating six of its patents on
smartphone technology. The award was still less than the US$2.5 billion dollars requested by Apple. The decision also ruled that Apple didn't violate 5 Samsung patents that were in the case
Samsung decried the decision saying that the move could harm innovation in the sector. It also followed a South Korean ruling that said both companies were guilty of infringing on each other's intellectual property. In the first trading after the ruling, Samsung shares on the
Kospi index fell 7.7%, the largest fall since October 24, 2008, to 1,177,000
Korean won.Apple then sought to ban the sales of eight Samsung phones (Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2 AT&T, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail) in the United States which has been denied by Judge Koh.
On September 4, 2012, Samsung announced it plans to examine all of its Chinese suppliers for possible violations of labor policies. The company said it will carry out audits of 250 Chinese companies that are its exclusive suppliers to see if children under the age of 16 are being used in their factories.
