Samsung

Samsung

Samsung  is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. It comprises numerous subsidiaries and affiliated businesses, most of

them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean chaebol (business conglomerate). Over the next three decades the group diversified into areas including food processing, textiles, insurance, securities and retail.

Samsung entered the electronics industry in the late 1960s and the construction and shipbuilding industries in the mid-1970s; these areas would drive its subsequent growth. Samsung was separated into four business groups – Samsung Group, Shinsegae Group, CJ Group and Hansol Group. Since the 1990s Samsung has increasingly globalized its activities, and electronics, particularly mobile phones and semiconductors, have become its most important source of income. Samsung has a powerful influence on South Korea's economic development, politics, media and culture. In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics began to invest heavily in research and development. 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. As of 2012, Samsung has invested more than US$13 billion in the Austin facility, which operates under the name Samsung Austin Semiconductor. Samsung started to rise as an international corporation in the 1990s. Samsung became the largest producer of memory chips in the world in 1992, and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after Intel. Samsung grew to be the world's largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal display panels. In the 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. In the August 21 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 March 14, 2013, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S4. Samsung plans to launch a new set of services beginning early 2015. The goal of this new suite of business offerings, dubbed Samsung 360 Services, is to become a help desk of sorts for businesses IT departments. The customizable services range from technical support to security solutions to having a Samsung employee embedded in a client's business as an on-site support manager or technology consultant.

Notable Samsung industrial subsidiaries include Samsung Electronics (the world's largest information technology company measured by 2012 revenues, and 4th in market value), Samsung Heavy Industries (the world's 2nd-largest shipbuilder measured by 2010 revenues), and Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T (respectively the world's 13th and 36th-largest construction companies). Other notable subsidiaries include Samsung Life Insurance (the world's 14th-largest life insurance company), Samsung Everland (operator of Everland Resort, the oldest theme park in South Korea), Samsung Techwin (an aerospace, surveillance and defense company) and Cheil Worldwide (the world's 15th-largest advertising agency measured by 2012 revenues). In 2013, Samsung began construction on building the world's largest mobile phone factory in the Thai Nguyen province of Vietnam. Samsung has been able to achieve the largest market share of nearly 31% in the global smartphone segment, as of 2013.