Samsung

Samsung (in official transliteration: Samseong Group ; Hangul: 삼성 그룹 Hanja: 三星 그룹) is one of the largest electronics companies in the world. Founded in March 1938 in Daegu, Korea, it operates in around 50 countries and it has over 70,000 workers. The turnover in 2002 was about 33 billion USD. Samsung (meaning three stars in Korean) was founded by Lee Byungchul. Samsung is one of the South Korean conglomerates (chaebols). It started as an exports company in 1938, but soon diversified. In 1953, Samsung started sugar production, a business no longer part of Samsung today. In 1958 insurance services started, in 1963 a department store was added. In 1967 Samsung started the Joong-Ang Ilbo daily newspaper. Today this paper has no affiliation with the company. Samsung Electronics was founded in 1969. In 1974 Samsung petrochemical and heavy indutries followed. The company was awarded an export prize by the government as part of the country's development programme (US$300 billion) in 1976. As a result of this, Samsung construction emerged a mere three months later the following year. Also in 1977 shipbuilding started. In 1978 Samsung was awarded a further US$ 100 billion by the government. The seventies started an enormous diversification which was was continued in the 1980s. In 1982, Samsung established a professional baseball team. In 1983 Samsung produced its first computer chip: a 64k DRAM chip. Towards the end of the decade, Samsung pushed its efforts in petrochemicals and electronics. The 1990s saw Samsung rise as an international corporation. Not only did it acquire a number of businesses abroad, but also began leading the way in certain electronic components. Samsung's construction branch was awarded the contract to build one of the two Petronas Towers in Malaysia in 1993. Samsung survived the IMF crisis in 1997-98 relatively unharmed. It has kept expanding since then. Like the other chaebols (conglomerates) in South Korea, Samsung ventured into building personal cars. Unlike the other companies, such as Hyundai, Samsung's venture was not successful and was sold to Renault, becoming Renault Samsung Motors. \n

External links

• www.samsung.com\n* www.samsungusa.com\n* Company timeline\n* Samsung Unlock Codes