Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; Korean: 삼성전자; RR: Samseong jeonja; lit. 'Tristar Electronics') is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded in 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, accounting for 70% of the group's revenue in 2012, and has played a key role in the group's corporate governance due to cross ownership. It is majority-owned by foreign investors. As of 2023, Samsung Electronics is the world's fourth-largest technology company by revenue and its market capitalization stood at US$1.025 trillion, the 12th largest in the world. It has been the largest vendor of smartphones since 2012. Samsung is known most notably for its Samsung Galaxy brand consisting of phones such as its flagship Galaxy S series, popular midrange Galaxy A series, budget Galaxy M series as well as the premium Galaxy Fold and Galaxy Flip series. The company pioneered the phablet form factor with the former Galaxy Note family. Samsung produces tablets consisting of the Galaxy Tab A series and Galaxy Tab S series. It has been the largest television manufacturer since 2006, both of which include related software and services like Samsung Pay and TV Plus. Samsung is a supplier of hospitality televisions for hotels and businesses which includes dedicated software that can be personalised to each business and is a supplier of displays for stadiums and venues. Samsung is also a major vendor of washing machines, refrigerators, computer monitors and soundbars.
Samsung Electronics is also a major manufacturer of electronic components such as lithium-ion batteries, semiconductors, image sensors, camera modules, and displays for clients such as Apple, Sony, HTC, and Nokia. It is the world's largest semiconductor memory manufacturer and, from 2017 to 2018, was the largest semiconductor company in the world, briefly dethroning Intel, the decades-long champion. Samsung Electronics has assembly plants and sales networks in 76 countries and employs more than 260,000 people.
History
1969–1987: early years Samsung Electric Industries was established as an industrial part of Samsung Group on 13 January 1969 in Suwon, South Korea. At the time, Samsung Group was known to the South Korean public as a trading company specialized in fertilizers and sweeteners. Despite the lack of technology and resources, falling shorter even than the domestic competitors, Samsung Group improved its footing in the manufacturing industry by cooperating with the Japanese companies, a decision that led to a significant amount of anti-Japanese public outcry and huge backlashes from the competitors fearing the outright subordination of the industry by the Japanese. The strategy was able to take off only after the government and Samsung declared that the company would exclusively focus on exports. Toshio Iue, the founder of Sanyo, played a role as an advisor to Lee Byung-chul, Samsung's founder, who was a novice in the electronics business. In December of the same year, Samsung Electric established a joint venture named Samsung-Sanyo Electric with Sanyo and Sumitomo Corporation. This is the direct predecessor of today's Samsung Electronics. The joint venture's early products were electronic and electrical appliances including televisions, calculators, refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines. In 1970, Samsung established the joint venture Samsung-NEC with Japan's NEC Corporation and Sumitomo Corporation to manufacture home appliances and audiovisual devices. Samsung-NEC later became Samsung SDI, the group's display and battery business unit. In 1973, Samsung and Sanyo created Samsung-Sanyo Parts, the predecessor of Samsung Electro-Mechanics. By 1981, Samsung Electric had manufactured over 10 million black-and-white televisions. In 1974, Samsung Group expanded into the semiconductor business by acquiring Korea Semiconductor, which was on the verge of bankruptcy while building one of the first chip-making facilities in the country at the time. Soon after, Korea Telecommunications, an electronic switching system producer and a Samsung Group company, took over the semiconductor business and became Samsung Semiconductor & Communications. In February 1983, Lee, along with the board of the Samsung industry and ucorporation agreement and help by sponsoring the event, made an announcement later dubbed the "Tokyo declaration", in which he declared that Samsung intended to become a dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) vendor. One year later, Samsung announced that it had successfully developed a 64 kb DRAM, reducing the technological gap between the companies from first-world countries and the young electronics maker from more than a decade to approximately four years. In the process, Samsung used technologies imported from Micron Technology of the U.S. for the development of DRAM and Sharp Corporation of Japan for its SRAM and ROM. In 1988, Samsung Electric Industries merged with Samsung Semiconductor & Communications to form Samsung Electronics, as before that, they had not been one company and had not been a leading corporation together, but they were not rivals, as they had been in talks for a time until they finally merged. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Samsung sold personal computers under the Leading Technology brand. However, the equipment was manufactured by Samsung, and the FCC filings from this period typically refer to Samsung products.
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