Samsung


Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous affiliated businesses, most of which operate under the Samsung brand, and is the largest chaebol in South Korea. Samsung has the world's fifth-highest brand value.
Founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-chul as a trading company, Samsung diversified into various sectors, including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities, and retail, over the next three decades. In the late 1960s, Samsung entered the electronics industry, followed by the construction and shipbuilding sectors in the mid-1970s—areas that would fuel its future growth. After Lee died in 1987, Samsung was divided into five business groups: Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, Hansol Group, and JoongAng Group.
Key affiliates of Samsung include Samsung Electronics, the world's largest information technology company, consumer electronics maker and chipmaker Samsung Heavy Industries, the world's second-largest shipbuilder and Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T Corporation, ranked 13th and 36th among global construction companies, respectively. Other significant subsidiaries are Samsung Life Insurance, the 14th-largest life insurance company globally, and Cheil Worldwide, the world's 15th-largest advertising agency

Etymology

According to Samsung's founder, the meaning of the Korean hanja Samsung is three stars. The three stands for something big, numerous and powerful, while stars stands for everlasting or eternal.

History

1938–1970

In 1938, during the Japanese era, Lee Byung-chul, a member of a large landowning family in Ginei moved to nearby Taikyu and founded Mitsuboshi Trading Company, or Samsung Sanghoe. Samsung started out as a small trading company with forty employees located in Su-dong. It dealt in dried fish, locally-grown groceries and noodles. The company prospered and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947. When the Korean War broke out, he was forced to leave Seoul. He started a sugar refinery in Pusan named Cheil Jedang. In 1954, Lee founded Cheil Mojik, a textiles company, and built the first plant in Chimsan-dong, Taegu. It was the largest woollen mill in the country at the time of construction.
Samsung diversified into various areas as Lee aimed to establish the company as a leader across multiple industries. The business expanded into sectors such as insurance, securities, and retail.
In 1947, 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's founder Lee Byung-chul. The trading firm grew to become the now Samsung C&T Corporation. After a few years, Cho and Lee separated due to differences in management style. Cho wanted a 30 equity share. Samsung Group was separated into Samsung Group and Hyosung Group, Hankook Tire and other businesses.
In the late 1960s, Samsung Group entered the electronics industry. It formed several electronics-related divisions, such as Samsung Electronics Devices, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications, and opened the facility in Suwon. Its first product was a black-and-white television set. Byung-chul was also the owner of the Tongyang Broadcasting Company, a private radio and television company that existed from 1964 to 1980, shut down after the Korean government reviewed the number of media outlets allowed. TBC allowed an early success thanks to its connections to Samsung, boosting the sale of its television sets.

1970–1990

In 1980, Samsung acquired the Kumi-based Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin and entered telecommunications hardware. Its early products were switchboards. The facility was developed into the telephone and fax manufacturing systems and became the center of Samsung's mobile phone manufacturing. They have produced over 800 million mobile phones to date. The company grouped them together under Samsung Electronics in the 1980s.
After Lee, the founder's death in 1987, Samsung Group was separated into five business groupsSamsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group, Hansol Group and the JoongAng Group. Shinsegae was originally part of Samsung Group, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group, Hansol Group, and the JoongAng Group. Today these separated groups are independent and they are not part of or connected to the Samsung Group. 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, Texas, in 1996. Samsung has invested more than US$13 billion in the Austin facility, which operates under the name Samsung Austin Semiconductor. This makes the Austin location the largest foreign investment in Texas and one of the largest single foreign investments in the United States.
In 1987, United States International Trade Commission found that the Samsung Group of South Korea unlawfully sold computer chips in the United States without licenses from the chip inventor, Texas Instruments Inc.

1990–2000

Since 1990, Samsung has increasingly globalised its activities and electronics; in particular, its mobile phones and semiconductors have become its most important source of income. It was in this period that Samsung started to rise as an international corporation in the 1990s. Samsung's construction branch was awarded contracts 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 world's largest producer of memory chips in 1992 and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after Intel. In 1995, Samsung's textile department invested in FUBU, an American hip hop apparel company, after the founder placed an advertisement asking for funding in The New York Times. The same year, it created its first liquid-crystal display screen. Samsung grew to be the world's largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal display panels. Ten years later, 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 and Sony and operates its factories and facilities in Tanjung, South Korea. 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. Renault Samsung is 80.1 per cent owned by Renault and 19.9 per cent owned by Samsung. Additionally, Samsung manufactured a range of aircraft from the 1980s to the 1990s. The company was founded in 1999 as Korea Aerospace Industries, the result of a 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.

2000–present

In 2000, Samsung R&D opened a development center in Warsaw, Poland. Its work began with set-top-box technology before moving into digital TV and smartphones. The smartphone platform was developed with partners, officially launched with the original Samsung Solstice line of devices and other derivatives in 2008, which was later developed into Samsung Galaxy line of devices including Notes, Edge and other products.
File:Korea President Park Business Leaders 20130508 01.jpg|thumb|The Samsung Group's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, with South Korean President Park Geun-hye, 2013
In 2007, former Samsung chief lawyer Kim Yong Chul claimed that he was involved in bribing and fabricating evidence on behalf of the group's chairman, Lee Kun-hee, and the company. Kim said that Samsung lawyers trained executives to serve as scapegoats in a "fabricated scenario" to protect Lee, even though those executives were not involved. Kim also told the media that he was "sidelined" by Samsung after he refused to pay a $3.3 million bribe to the U.S. Federal District Court judge presiding over a case where two of their executives were found guilty on charges related to memory chip price-fixing. Kim revealed that the company had raised a large number of secret funds through bank accounts illegally opened under the names of up to 1,000 Samsung executivesunder his own name, four accounts were opened to manage 5 billion won.
In 2010, Samsung announced a ten-year growth strategy centered around five businesses. One of these businesses was to be focused on biopharmaceuticals, to which has committed ₩2.1 trillion. In 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.
On 24 August 2012, nine American jurors ruled that Samsung Electronics had to pay Apple $1.05 billion in damages for violating six of its patents on smartphone technology. The award was still less than the $2.5 billion requested by Apple. The decision also ruled that Apple did not violate five Samsung patents cited in the case. Samsung decried the decision saying that the move could harm innovation in the sector. It also followed a South Korean ruling stating that both companies were guilty of infringing on each other's intellectual property. In first trading after the ruling, Samsung shares on the KOSPI fell 7.7%, the largest fall since 24 October 2008, to 1,177,000 South Korean won. Apple then sought to ban the sales of eight Samsung phones in the United States, but this was denied by the court.
the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan is investigating Samsung and its local Taiwanese advertising agency for false advertising. The case was commenced after the commission received complaints stating that the agency hired students to attack competitors of Samsung Electronics in online forums. Samsung Taiwan made an announcement on its Facebook page in which it stated that it had not interfered with any evaluation report and had stopped online marketing campaigns that constituted posting or responding to content in online forums.
In 2015, Samsung has been granted more U.S. patents than any other company. The company received 7,679 utility patents through 11 December.
The Galaxy Note 7 smartphone went on sale on 19 August 2016. However, in early September 2016, Samsung suspended sales of the phone and announced an informal recall. This action was taken after some units of the phones were found to have batteries with a defect that caused them to generate excessive heat, leading to fires and explosions. Samsung replaced the recalled units of the phones with a new version. However, it was later discovered that the new version of the Galaxy Note 7 also had the battery defect. Consequently, Samsung recalled all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide on 10 October 2016 and permanently ceased production of the phone the following day.
In 2018, they inaugurated the world's largest mobile manufacturing facility in Noida, India, in the presence of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South Korean President Moon Jae-in.
In 2023, Samsung announced its decision to reduce the production of memory chips. This action is on account of the company's projected 96% decline in quarterly operating profit - a 600 million won decline from the 14 trillion won in 2022. The said drop can be attributed to the weak demand after COVID and a slowing global economy. Despite this decision, the company's shares increased by more than 4%. Samsung has been the top two applicant for PCT filled patents in 2022 and 2023 worldwide.
Following the grant to Samsung of U.S. Patent No. 9,675,229 and its European counterpart, EP 2963515, both patents were challenged through an ex parte reexamination in the United States and opposition proceedings in Europe. The European patent was revoked in March 2024. The U.S. patent ceased to be in force in June 2025 due to non-payment of maintenance fees, approximately ten years before the end of its full statutory term.

Influence in South Korea

Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture and has been a major driving force behind the "Miracle on the Han River". Its affiliate companies produce around a fifth of South Korea's total exports. Samsung's revenue was equal to 22.4% of South Korea's $1.67 trillion GDP in 2022.
"You can even say the Samsung chairman is more powerful than the President of South Korea. Korean people have come to think of Samsung as invincible and above the law", said Woo Suk-hoon, host of a popular economics podcast in a Washington Post article headlined "In South Korea, the Republic of Samsung", published on 9 December 2012. Critics claimed that Samsung knocked out smaller businesses, limiting choices for South Korean consumers and sometimes colluded with fellow giants to fix prices while bullying those who investigate. Lee Jung-hee, a South Korean presidential candidate, said in a debate, "Samsung has the government in its hands. Samsung manages the legal world, the press, the academics and bureaucracy".

Operations

Samsung comprises around 80 companies. Its activities include construction, consumer electronics, financial services, shipbuilding, and medical services, and two research and development stations that have allowed the chaebol to enter the industries of "high-polymer chemicals, genetic engineering tools , aerospace, and nanotechnology."
the Samsung Group comprised 59 unlisted companies and 19 listed companies, all of which had their primary listing on the Korea Exchange.
In FY 2009, Samsung reported consolidated revenues of 220 trillion KRW. In FY 2010, Samsung reported consolidated revenues of 280 trillion KRW, and profits of 30 trillion KRW based upon a KRW-USD exchange rate of 1,084.5 KRW per USD, the spot rate as of 2011 These amounts do not include the revenues from Samsung's subsidiaries based outside South Korea.
In 2024, the World Intellectual Property Organization 's Hague Yearly Review ranked Samsung's number of industrial design applications filled under the Hague System as 1st in the world, with 544 industrial design applications submitted during 2023.

Leadership

  1. Lee Byung-chul
  2. Lee Maeng-hee, Lee Byung-chul's first son
  3. Lee Kun-hee, Lee Byung-chul's third son
  4. Lee Soo-bin

    Affiliates

Joint Ventures

Stakes

Divested

Defunct

  • Alpha Processor Inc. was established in 1998 as a joint venture with U.S.-based Compaq, to enter the high-end microprocessor market. The venture was also aimed at expanding Samsung's non-memory chip business by manufacturing DEC Alpha CPUs. At the time, Samsung and Compaq invested $500 million in Alpha Processor.
  • GE Samsung Lighting was a joint venture between Samsung and the GE Lighting subsidiary of General Electric. The venture was established in 1998 and was broken up in 2009.
  • was a subsidiary of Samsung until 1999 when it became independent. After that, it continued to make computer monitors and plasma displays until 2003, Samtron became Samsung when Samtron was a brand. In 2003 the website redirected to Samsung.
  • S-LCD Corporation was a joint venture between Samsung Electronics and the Japan-based Sony Corporation established in April 2004. On 26 December 2011, Samsung Electronics announced that it would acquire all of Sony's shares in the venture.
  • Global Steel Exchange was a joint venture formed in 2000 between Samsung, the U.S.-based Cargill, the Switzerland-based Duferco Group, and the Luxembourg-based Tradearbed, to handle their online buying and selling of steel.

    Acquisitions and attempted acquisitions

Samsung formed Samsung [Strategy and Innovation Center|Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center ] in 2012 and Samsung NEXT in 2013 for incubation, investment, partnerships, and acquisitions. In 2017, Samsung NEXT created a USD 150 million fund for early-stage software and services startups. Samsung Catalyst Fund, SSIC's investment arm, has funded 15-20 startups per year. SSIC primarily focuses on internet of things, cloud and computer data storage, smart machines, smart health, and privacy and security. In 2025, Samsung Electronics launched a business support division with a dedicated mergers and acquisitions team.
DateCompanyBusinessCountryValue Derived productsAcquired by
1MEDISON Co.Medical EquipmentSouth Koreadts|2011|7|USAdts|2011|12|

Major clients

Major clients include:

Shell plc

United Arab Emirates government

Ontario government

Corporate image

The basic colour in the logo is blue, which Samsung has employed for years, supposedly symbolizing stability, reliability and corporate social responsibility.

Audio logo

Samsung has an audio logo, which consists of the notes E♭, A♭, D♭, E♭; after the initial E♭ tone it is up a perfect fourth to A♭, down a perfect fifth to D♭, then up a major second to return to the initial E♭ tone. The audio logo was produced by Musikvergnuegen and written by Walter Werzowa. This audio logo is discontinued as of 2015

Font

In 2014, Samsung unveiled its Samsung Sharp Sans font.
In July 2016, Samsung unveiled its SamsungOne font, a typeface that hopes to give a consistent and universal visual identity to the wide range of Samsung products. SamsungOne was designed to be used across Samsung's diverse device portfolio, with a focus on legibility for everything from smaller devices like smartphones to larger connected TVs or refrigerators, as well as Samsung marketing and advertisements. The font family supports 400 different languages through over 25,000 characters.

Sponsorships

spent an estimated $14 billion on advertising and marketing in 2013. At 5.4% of annual revenue, this is a larger proportion than any of the world's top-20 companies by sales. Samsung became the world's biggest advertiser in 2012, spending $4.3 billion, compared to Apple's $1 billion. Samsung's global brand value of $39.6 billion is less than half that of Apple.

In Vietnam

In March 2008, Samsung received an investment certificate and began construction of its first mobile phone manufacturing plant in Vietnam, Samsung Electronics Vietnam in Bac Ninh. The project originally had an investment capital of 670 million USD, but it was quickly increased to 1.5 billion USD, then to 2.5 billion USD, nearly four times the original investment capital.
In the period from 2018 to 2022, Samsung contributed over 306 billion USD in export revenue to Vietnam. In 2022 alone, despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the figure reached 65 billion USD, contributing significantly to Vietnam's total export value, which for the first time exceeded the 700 billion USD threshold, reaching over 732 billion USD.
In addition, Samsung has also brought Vietnamese businesses deeper into the global value chain and contributed significantly to the development of the electronics industry in Vietnam. Currently, the number of Vietnamese first- and second-tier suppliers in Samsung's global supply chain has increased tenfold, from 25 businesses in 2014 to 257 businesses by the end of 2022.

Controversies

Labor abuses

Samsung was the subject of several complaints about child labor in its supply chain from 2012 to 2015.
In July 2014, Samsung cut its contract with Shinyang Electronics after it received a complaint about the company violating child labor laws. Samsung says that its investigation turned up evidence of Shinyang using underage workers and that it severed relations immediately per its "zero tolerance" policy for child labor violations.
One of Samsung's Chinese supplier factories, HEG, was criticized for using underage workers by China Labor Watch in July 2014. HEG denied the charges and has sued China Labor Watch. CLW issued a statement in August 2014 claiming that HEG employed over ten children under the age of 16 at a factory in Huizhou, Guangdong. The group said the youngest child identified was 14 years old. Samsung said that it conducted an onsite investigation of the production line that included one-on-one interviews but found no evidence of child labor being used. CLW responded that HEG had already dismissed the workers described in its statement before Samsung's investigators arrived.
CLW also claimed that HEG violated overtime rules for adult workers. CLW said a female college student was only paid her standard wage despite working four hours of overtime per day even though Chinese law requires overtime pay at 1.5 to 2.0 times standard wages.
In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands, including Samsung, of being connected to alleged forced Uyghur labor in Xinjiang.

Union-busting activity

Samsung has a no-union policy and has been engaged in union-busting activities around the world. Samsung has also been sued by a union for stealing the corpse of a dead worker. On 6 May 2020, Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong apologized for the union-busting scandals.

2007 slush fund scandal

Kim Yong-chul, the former head of the legal department at Samsung's Restructuring Office, and Catholic Priests Association for Justice uncovered Lee Kun-hee's slush fund on 29 October 2007. He presented a list of 30 artworks that the Lee family purchased with some of the slush funds, which were to be found in Samsung's warehouse in south of Seoul, along with documents about bribes to prosecutors, judges and lawmakers, tax collectors with thousands of borrowed-named bank account.
The court sentenced Lee Kun-hee to 3 years' imprisonment with 5 years' probation, and fined him. But on 29 December 2009, the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak specially pardoned Lee, stating that the intent of the pardon was to allow Lee to remain on the International Olympic Committee.
Kim Yong-chul published the book Thinking about Samsung in 2010. He wrote detailed accounts of Samsung's behavior and how the company lobbied governmental authorities including the court officials, prosecutors and national tax service officials for transferring Samsung's management rights to Lee Jae-yong.

Lee Kun-hee's prostitution scandal

In July 2016, the investigative journal KCIJ-Newstapa released a video which appeared to show Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee paying a group of prostitutes for sex acts. The footage was filmed on five separate occasions between December 2011 and June 2013 both at Lee's residence and a secret rental home.
Police detained six suspects for taking the compromising videos without Lee Kun-hee's knowledge. Investigators stated that, by threatening to release the tapes, the suspects were able to extort from Samsung, a claim which Samsung representatives denied.
One of the suspects, surnamed Seon, was a former executive of a competitor Chaebol, CJ CheilJedang, which used to be part of Samsung Group until its separation in 1993. Lee Kun-hee's older brother is Lee Jay-hyun, the Chairman of CJ CheilJedang, and the two shared a heated rivalry. This fraternal feud fueled rumours that, as a former CJ employee had been indicted, Lee Jay-hyun had co-ordinated the scandal against his younger brother. However, prosecutors were not able to find sufficient evidence that CJ's leadership had knowledge or involvement in their former executive's actions.
On 12 April 2018, Supreme Court of Korea sentenced the former employee of CJ CheilJedang to four years and six months in prison for blackmail and intimidation.
While it was speculated that prosecutors were looking into Lee Kun-hee's culpability for sex trafficking, charges were never pursued, likely due to his health. Lee Kun-hee had suffered a heart attack in 2014 and had lapsed into a coma, where he remained until his death in 2020.

2017 bribery scandal

In February 2017, de facto Samsung leader Lee Jae-yong was arrested for bribery, embezzlement, hiding assets overseas and perjury. In return for government approval for a merger of two Samsung affiliates, it was alleged that Lee paid to a close friend of incumbent President Park Geun-hye. He was convicted and initially sentenced to 5 years incarceration, but left prison after a year when the Seoul High Court suspended and halved his sentence. Then, following a retrial in 2021, Lee was sent back to prison for 2.5 years. He was released early after serving 10 months of his sentence in August 2021 as part of South Korea's yearly tradition of clemency on Liberation Day of Korea|Liberation Day]. In August 2022, Lee received a presidential pardon, which was supported by 70% of the Korean public, according to local polls.

Supporting far-right groups

The investigative team of special prosecutors looking into the 2016 South Korean political scandal announced that the Blue House received money from South Korea's four largest chaebols to fund pro-government demonstrations by conservative and far-right organizations such as the Korean Parent Federation and the Moms Brigade.

Price fixing

On 19 October 2011, Samsung companies were fined €145,727,000 for being part of a price cartel of ten companies for DRAMs which lasted from 1 July 1998 to 15 June 2002. The companies received, like most of the other members of the cartel, a 10% reduction for acknowledging the facts to investigators. Samsung had to pay 90% of their share of the settlement, but Micron avoided payment as a result of having initially revealed the case to investigators.
In Canada, during 1999, some DRAM microchip manufacturers conspired to price fix, among the accused included Samsung. The price fix was investigated in 2002. A recession started to occur that year, and the price fix ended; however, in 2014, the Canadian government reopened the case and investigated silently. Sufficient evidence was found and presented to Samsung and two other manufacturers during a class action lawsuit hearing. The companies agreed upon a $120 million agreement, with $40 million as a fine, and $80 million to be paid back to Canadians who purchased a computer, printer, MP3 player, gaming console or camera from April 1999 to June 2002.

Misleading claims

In Australia during 2022, Australia's competition and consumer commission fined Samsung AU$14 million. The fine came due to misleading water resistance claims for over 3.1 million smartphones. The commission stated that during 2016–2018 the company advertised its Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, A5, A7, S8, S8 Plus and Note 8 devices as able to survive short immersion in water. However, after many user complaints about the devices having issues after water submersion, such as charger port corrosion. The ACCC have officially labelled the fact these devices have "water resistance" listed as a feature misleading and proceeded with the fine.

Spyware attack on Samsung phones

According to reports, a type of spyware called Landfall has been active on Samsung Galaxy phones in the Middle East in selected countries including Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Morocco since 2024. This spyware is capable of accessing complete information including photos, sounds and calls without a single click from the user. This dangerous spyware was sent via WhatsApp and infected many Samsung phones over the course of a year.