Smartphone Samsung incredible success story

Synonymous with being the height of hi-tech and sleek design, it is hard to believe Samsung was once a one-person grocery store trading local produce in South Korea. During its journey to becoming the world’s second-largest tech company. That is the incredible story of Samsung, from its humble import-export beginnings to global tech domination and its latest’ folding’ smartphone.

Samsung was founded in 1938 by Lee Byung-Chull, a local businessman who opened a grocery trading store in Daegu, South Korea. The store traded noodles, dried fish, fruit and vegetables, and other local produce in and around the city and exported the goods to China.

Following the Korean War in the early 1950s, Byung-Chull expanded the grocery trading business into textiles, opening the largest woolen mill in Korea. At the time, Korea was one of the world’s poorest countries, and Byung-Chull helped redevelop his nation’s economy by focusing heavily on industrialization.

During this fraught financial period for the country, the South Korean government supported large domestic companies. The practice, known as the chaebol, nurtured firms with easy financing and protected them from the competition. Samsung was among those supported by the chaebol since the early 1960s, securing a string of loans and other business support.

However, it wasn’t until 1969 that Samsung entered the electronics industry, opening electronic-focused divisions. One of its first electronic goods was black and white televisions, which it first began exporting to Panama in 1971. By the mid-1970s, Samsung made washing machines and fridges before creating – and mass-producing – color TVs while continuing its black and white models.

Not wanting to be left behind in other burgeoning industries, the 1970s also saw Samsung open subsidiaries, including Samsung Shipbuilding, Samsung Heavy Industries, and Samsung Precision Company. Samsung also started to invest in the chemical and petrochemical industries.
In 1974 Samsung Electronics acquired Hankook Semiconductor, a move which saw the company become the market leader in memory chips in the early 1990s and retain its position as the world’s leading manufacturer of semiconductors. Today, even most Apple iPhones, the arch-rival of Samsung’s Galaxy phones, use Samsung memory chips.

The 1970s was a pivotal decade for Samsung. It started to export home electronic products abroad, and by 1978 it had produced four million black and white TVs – the most in the world at the time. That same year, Samsung opened its first overseas office in the US and exported its first VCRs to America in 1984.

Around that time, the company changed its name to Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, and sales exceeded 1 trillion won, the equivalent of 3.4 trillion won today.
Samsung’s first Android smartphone to enjoy mainstream commercial success was the Galaxy S, which was launched just nine months after the original Galaxy. The phone went on to sell more than 25 million units.
Adding a dramatic twist to the tale, Kun-Hee was pardoned by South Korea’s president Lee Myung-bak. Having received a special amnesty, Samsung’s former chairman returned to helm the company after a two-year absence. His return came after Samsung made record sales in 2009.
Kun-Hee’s pardon is believed to have been made to allow the billionaire business tycoon, who is a member of the International Olympic Committee, to boost South Korea’s efforts to host the Winter Olympics. It might have worked because, in 2011, it was announced South Korea would host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

As Galaxy smartphones started to sell like hotcakes and the company’s disgraced chairman returned to the helm, a book named Think Samsung was published in 2010, written by Samsung’s former chief legal counsel Kim Yong-Chul. The book made sensational claims about Kun-Hee’s corruption, claiming he stole around $10 billion from Samsung subsidiaries, bribed government officials, and destroyed evidence.
Despite the allegations reported in the book, most South Korea’s mainstream media refused to run the scandal, seeing an attack on Samsung as an attack on South Korea itself.

Samsung continued to do what it does best, focus on new products. Eager to compete with Apple’s new iPad, in 2010, Samsung launched the Galaxy Tab. Labeled an “oversized smartphone in ill-fitting clothes,” using Android 2.2 with no tablet optimization, the Galaxy Tab didn’t get off to a good start.

In spring 2011, Apple began to litigate against Samsung in patent infringement suits around the design of Samsung’s smartphones. By October, the two tech giants were embroiled in 19 ongoing cases in 10 countries.

The protracted legal disputes between Samsung and Apple were eventually put to bed. In 2012 a US court ruled that Samsung had infringed the copyright of the design of Apple’s iPhone, and Apple was awarded $548.2 million three years later. However, in a fresh twist in 2016, the supreme court sided with Samsung, seeking to pare back $399 million of its previous debt, as reported by The Guardian.
Despite the damning copyright infringement ruling, in 2013, Samsung was named the world’s largest tech company by the annual Fortune 500 list, which ranks the world’s largest corporations by revenue. Samsung was placed five notches above rival Apple, reporting $178.6 billion and profits of $20.6 billion.

Further setbacks awaited the South Korean tech giant when, in 2016, the company permanently ceased production of its high-end Galaxy Note 7 smartphones following reports of the phones catching fire due to faults with their batteries. The recall is said to have cost Samsung $5.3 billion and proved hugely damaging for the company’s reputation.

After the Galaxy Note 7 fiasco, Samsung tried to move forward and unveiled the world’s first foldable smartphone prototype in late 2018. However, just days before the exciting release date of the Galaxy Fold, the tech firm postponed the launch due to broken screens. Reviewers had reportedly removed a film they believed was a protective layer of the phone but was instead part of it.

Despite being laden with controversy, scandal, and setbacks over the years, Samsung is now the 15th largest company globally – not bad for a one-person dried fish-selling start-up.