samsung means three stars in korean but if you're the proud owner of a fancy
samsung phone tv or washing machine you might be
expecting a five-star experience due to samsung positioning itself as a premium
tech brand with price tags to match but expensive gadgets weren't what
samsung was always known for in fact the company started all the way back in 1938
in the korean city of taigu as a trading firm that dealt in foods like dried fish
and noodles and then later expanded to seoul korea's capital after world war ii
ended this period of prosperity was short-lived however as after the
invasion of that city during the korean war samsung nearly went under only
surviving thanks to its diversification the company actually established a sugar
refinery in the port city of busan which was the only major city in korea that
was untouched by communist aggression samsung also got involved in textiles
and wood milling and as war economies are often kind to the manufacturing
industry samsung's new businesses help them not only stay afloat but continue
to expand after the war with insurance
being one of their first divisions that didn't involve commodity trading in fact
samsung is actually the largest insurance company in korea to this day
all of this growth led samsung to become one of the chebules or massive korean
companies that are primarily family run rather than mostly controlled by
shareholders who have bought stock meaning that they became very
influential in national politics in korea but it wasn't until 1969 that
samsung started making electronics and perhaps unsurprisingly their first
product was a small black and white television
they continued to expand in the early 1970s by cranking out home appliances
but there was an obstacle in their way samsung was relying on imports of small
components in order to assemble their products so in 1974 they decided to buy
a domestic semiconductor company in order to have greater control over their
supply chain although this decision wasn't unanimous among the samsung brass
it played a huge role in samsung's future fortunes having its own
semiconductor manufacturing ARM allowed the company to make more electronics and
ship them to more distant parts of the globe bringing in more money and helping
them grow samsung then ventured into heavy industry defense construction chemicals
and even a theme park and hotels in fact
they still run a chain of luxury hotels in korea with the original location once
serving as the official guest house for the korean government but getting back
to electronics samsung started producing dram in the early 1980s a product
they're still known for thanks to its earlier investment in manufacturing with
help from micron and sharp now the timing for this was great as more and
more devices were starting to use dram but not all was well in samsung land
unlike today where samsung products are generally viewed as higher end its
electronics from the 1980s and early 90s were poorly received and ironically this
was especially true for their mobile phones in fact they had such a
reputation for poor quality that japan-based motorola dominated the
market even in their home turf of south korea for quite some time which is
interesting when you consider that korea and japan have historically had pretty
frosty relations this actually nearly led samsung to
abandon the phone market completely but
instead of giving up they decided to spend time figuring out how to make
higher quality consumer goods instead of just churning out cheapo bargain
basement offerings so samsung underwent a huge transformation in its electronics
division 24 000 workers were laid off
and huge parts of the company totaling around two billion dollars were sold
then instead of trying to rush the next big thing
to market samsung focused on making quality components both to sell to other
companies and to help them improve their own consumer devices down the road and
of course as a massive chebul they had
quite a bit of money to pour into development this ended up paying huge
dividends and samsung of course did ultimately become a premium brand for
example they started making lcd displays fairly early on in the 1990s that meant
that by the time they really started catching on with consumers samsung had
already spent years perfecting them which set the stage for them to become
one of the world's largest manufacturers of flat screen tvs and monitors this
same strategy also helped samsung become a leader in the Android mobile phone
market now although their galaxy obviously wasn't their first Android
phone it was one of the first to showcase more advanced features than the
iphone helping samsung become a real rival to apple to the point where they
ended up doing some pretty clever marketing poking fun at the hype
surrounding new idevice releases which really got consumers to start
considering samsung as a serious premium alternative
samsung's success in the mobile market did come with some unexpected
consequences though and the hospital that they run in seoul actually has to
give out discounted treatments for swipe induced carpal tunnel these days
that last bit was a joke there's no discounted treatment although they do
actually run a hospital in seoul this video is brought to you by massdrop
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