Samsung Trivia: 35 interesting facts about the company!

Samsung Group is a South Korean  multinational conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. Let’s see some amazing facts and trivia about it!

1.It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol (business conglomerate).

2. According to Samsung’s founder, the meaning of the Korean hanja word Samsung (三星) is “tri-star” or “three stars”.

3. The word “three” represents something “big, numerous and powerful”

4. Samsung was founded by Lee Byung-chul in 1938 as a trading company.

5.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”.

6. Its affiliate companies produce around a fifth of South Korea’s total exports.

7. Samsung’s revenue was equal to 17% of South Korea’s $1,082 billion GDP.

8. Samsung started out as a small trading company with forty employees located in Su-dong (now Ingyo-dong). It dealt in dried-fish,locally-grown groceries and noodles.

9. The company prospered and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947.

10. When the Korean War broke out, he was forced to leave Seoul. He started a sugar refinery in Busan named Cheil Jedang.

11. In 1954, Lee founded Cheil Mojik and built the plant in Chimsan-dong, Daegu. It was the largest woollen mill ever in the country.

12. Samsung diversified into many different areas. Lee sought to establish Samsung as leader in a wide range of industries. Samsung moved into lines of business such as insurance, securities and retail. President Park Chung Hee placed great importance on industrialization.

13. He focused his economic development strategy on a handful of large domestic conglomerates, protecting them from competition and assisting them financially

14. 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-chull. The trading firm grew to become the present-day 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.

15. 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 made the facility in Suwon. Its first product was a black-and-white television set.

16.In 1980, Samsung acquired the Gumi-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.[21] The company grouped them together under Samsung Electronics in the 1980s.

17. After Lee, the founder’s death in 1987, Samsung Group was separated into four business groups—Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and the Hansol Group.

18. In 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.

19. As of 2012, Samsung has invested more than US$13,000,000,000 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.

20. 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.

21. Samsung became the world’s largest producer of memory chips in 1992 and is the world’s second-largest chipmaker after Intel (see Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year).

22.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, 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.

23. In 2000, Samsung opened a computer programming laboratory in Warsaw, Poland. Its work began with set-top-box technology before moving into digital TV and smartphones. As of 2011, the Warsaw base is Samsung’s most important R&D center in Europe, forecast to be recruiting 400 new-hires per year by the end of 2013.

24. 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 ₩2,100,000,000,000.

25. In December 2011, Samsung Electronics sold its hard disk drive business to Seagate.

26. 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.

27. On 21 August’s 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 14 March 2013, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S4.

28. On 24 August 2012, nine American jurors ruled that Samsung 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.

29. 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 index fell 7.7%, the largest fall since 24 October 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 the court.

30. Samsung have been the sponsors of Premier League football club Chelsea since 2005, the sponsorship was ended after ten years in June 2015.

31. Samsung, which started as a domestic sponsor of the Olympics in Seoul 1988, has been a worldwide Olympic partner since the 1998 Winter Olympics.

32. Samsung operating many sports clubs, football club Suwon Samsung Bluewings, baseball club Samsung Lions, basketball club Seoul Samsung Thunders, volleyball club Daejeon Samsung Fire Bluefangs, etc.

33. Samsung also sponsors a former StarCraft: Brood War and current Starcraft II and League of Legends professional gaming team named Samsung Galaxy. Samsung has sponsored the team since 2000.

34. Samsung Electronics spent an estimated $14 billion (U.S.) – more than Iceland’s GDP – 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 (Apple spent 0.6% and General Motors spent 3.5%). 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.

35. Samsung is the principal partner of the Sydney Opera House.