Samsung is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.
Today, Samsung is one of the world’s most successful technology companies and one of the world’s largest producers of electronic devices. Samsung is popularly known for its variety of phones home appliances and more, so, it will come to most people as a surprise that it actually started as a grocery store.
Lee Byung-chill, the founder of Samsung started trading and exporting goods such as noodles, and vegetables in and around the city. The company was set up in Taegu, Korea, on march 1, 1938. Samsung is a Korean word that stands for “three stars”.
Samsung later diversified to industrialization, focusing on areas like textiles, food processing, insurance, and others from around 1947 to the 60s, and that was the beginning of a new dawn for the company.
Samsung ventured into the electronic industry in the late 1960s. Its first product was a black and white television set. The company acquired the Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin situated in Gumi in 1980 where the facility was developed into the telephone and Fax manufacturing systems and became the center of Samsung’s mobile phone manufacturing. Which came to be grouped under Samsung Electronics in the 80s. And it was in the 80s that the company’s sales reached the sum of one trillion won.
In 1987, the founder of Samsung Lee Byung-Chul passes away and was succeeded by his son Lee Kun Hee. Also after Lee’s demise, the company was separated into five business groups although currently these groups are no longer connected to the Samsung Group.
Today Samsung has expanded magnanimously to the production of consumer electronics, clothing, electronic components, medical equipment, telecommunications equipment and home appliances, and others.
From 1990-2000 Samsung rosed to an international corporation, with its mobile phone as its pertinent source of income. It was in the same era that Samsung became the world’s largest producer of memory chips, and also the time when it created its first liquid-crystal display screen.
It was in the first quarter of 2012, that Samsung Electronics became the world’s largest mobile phone maker. And in 2017, Samsung was given governmental permission to test a self-driving car.
Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea’s economic development, politics, media, and culture. Samsung constitutes 80 companies. In June 2010, Samsung released its first-ever smartphone: the Samsung Galaxy S and has come a long way thereafter. The company generated revenue equal to 17% of South Korea’s $1,082 billion GDP in 2013.
Today Samsung has produced over 800 million mobile phones to date.
