Everyone knows Samsung as a company that sells everything, but it is useful to know its history because it is more than inspiring. We delve into the Korean DNA and discover how everything is forged.

We go to the beginning of the 20th century, a complicated political moment in the entire territory of Korea, which was under the domination of the Japanese occupation. We must highlight one name above all: Lee Byung-chul, born in 1910, who would mark the beginning of Samsung as a company.

Index of contents

What does the word Samsung mean?

At the time, Lee Byung-chul was asked the same thing and assured that the Korean word for Samsung means "3 stars":

1938-1960, the history of Samsung begins

Lee Byung-chul founded Samsung as a trading company that was engaged in various purposes: food processing, textiles, insurance, security, and clothing. South Korea was a Japanese colony at the time, and Lee decides to move to Daegu to found Mitsuboshi Trading Company, which in Korean is Samsung Sanghoe.

Lee started Samsung as a small company with 40 workers based in Su-dong. It was a fish market that sold dried fish, noodles and local food. The company prospered and in 1947 they decided to move to Seoul, but a few years later the Korean War (1950-1953) would break out. This forced Lee to close down his company in Seoul.

He decided to set up a sugar refinery called Cheil Jedan in Busan. A year after the war ended, Lee created Cheil Mojik and built the plant in Daegu, the city where he originally moved.

Byung-chul again diversified Samsung into other sectors because he maintained the idea of ​​Samsung being a leading company in a wide range of sectors. For this reason, they began to invest in the insurance, security and clothing sector.

Cho Hong-jai, the founder of Hyosung (motorcycle business group), decided to invest in the new company called Samsung Trading Corporation, with Lee at the helm. This company is today called Samsung C&T Corporation. This merger didn't work out very well because Cho and Lee thought differently, so they parted ways.

However, we would have to wait until 1960 to see the giant in action. At the end of 1960, different companies related to the technological world were created, such as: Samsung Electronics Devices, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning or Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications.

Samsung's first technological product was a black and white television, something very common for the time, right?

1970-1990, Samsung starts with telephony

The first step was to purchase telecommunications hardware from Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin, a Korean company located in Gumi. The first products were switchboards, but this acquisition facilitated the development of telephone and fax systems to later become the center of Samsung's mobile phone manufacturing.

In fact, it is worth mentioning that it launched its first 8-bit personal computer only for the Korean market: the SPC-1000, which used an audio cassette tape to save and load information.

In 1987 the tragic news takes place: Lee Byung-chul dies. The effect of this news caused the entire Samsung business group to be divided into 5 groups:

As of today, none of them are related or connected to the Samsung group. In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics began to invest heavily in research and development, something that would mark the history of technology.

It can be categorically stated that his investment in research has been what has pushed him to be at the forefront of the technology industry. Samsung diversified again within the technological world: it set up factories all over the world.

However, Samsung Semiconductor was going to be a big deal for the company, which would give it a huge boost from the 90s onwards.

1990 to 2000, architectural and technological giant

The pieces of the puzzle begin to come together with the movements of the Samsung business group in this decade. Samsung wins the public tenders for the construction of the Petronas towers in Malaysia, the Taipei 101 tower in Taiwan or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Amid all this business hustle and bustle, Samsung introduces SDRAM and SDR. It was a type of memory that was synchronized with the frequency of the CPU, so it could support up to 133 MHz. This was produced in 1992, but it wasn't until 1996 that it would be sold with 16 MB of output on each module.

Lee Kun-hee maintains the legacy of his father Lee Byung-chul by making several moves in 1993: he sold 10 subsidiaries of the Samsung group, which would reduce the size of the group considerably. However, there was a more than reasonable reason: to concentrate all economic efforts in 3 industries:

With electronics we mean EVERYTHING you can imagine:

In 1996, Samsung develops the first DDR module in history, which would come with 64 MB. Intel would make the mistake of betting on Rambus, instead of DDR, which reached 400 MHz, and the AMD Athlon were the first to support them.

1997 came and a financial crisis broke out across Asia, leaving scores of Korean companies bankrupt. Samsung came out on top, but had to sell 80% of Samsung Motor to Renault. As if that were not enough, Samsung plunged into the 1990s to build airplanes and helicopters, founding Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) in 1999.

2000-2020: RAM, Android, NAND Flash, LED…

What can we say about Samsung in the first decade of the 2000s? It was crazy that of sectors that cornered the highest levels. In order not to go around the bush, the best thing we can do is diversify, as these Koreans have done throughout their lives.

LCD and LED

Previously, we have said that Samsung created LCD panels, but in 2004 it took over 40% of the OLED market share, developing and creating AMOLED. Only in this section, the company generated 100 million dollars, which in 2006 would be 475 million.

As of 2006, Samsung had more than 600 US patents and more than 2,800 international patents, owning the majority of AMOLED technologies. These panels landed in their own phones, being called "Super AMOLED" because they were touch. Today, it is one of the best panels on the smartphone market, being used by OnePlus, Xiaomi and Huawei.

We arrived at 2007, at which time we saw the landing of the 40-inch LCD panel with 10 mm thickness; just a year later he reduced it to 7.9 mm. As early as 2008, it began non-stop manufacturing 24-inch LCD panels for desktop monitors and 12.1-inch panels for laptops.

A year later, Samsung plunged into the development of LED televisions with a thickness of 3.9 mm. The advertising campaign compared that thickness to that of 2 coins together, what madness!

Afterwards, his goals were to go up to 1080p resolution, achieve a 120 Hz refresh rate and a contrast of 5000:1. We would arrive at 2013, at which time we would see the first curved OLED television in history.

smartphones

Apple laid the first stone with the iPhone in 2010, but Samsung intends to respond with Samsung Galaxy S, a high-end smartphone. Samsung used all operating systems: Windows Phone, Symbian, LiMo and Bada, the latter is theirs. In 2012, it would be the best-selling smartphone manufacturer in the world, passing Nokia, which had been the leader since 1998.

It would be in 2013 when he decided to go for Android and Windows Phone, although more for the former: he launched more than 43 smartphones in that year. It is clear that the purpose of Nokia was to move from Symbian to Windows Phone, but Samsung had something to do with its terminals.

Little is taken into account the presence of Samsung in emerging markets, being more powerful in underdeveloped countries.

The beginnings of Android were not the best, but little by little it has been establishing its TouchWiz customization layer and its Tizen operating system, which is present in its Gear range and in its televisions. It must be said that most of the advances made in smartwatches came from Google (with the Moto 360) and Samsung's Galaxy Gear. In that sense, Apple has been one of the last to invest in this market niche.

Lastly, don't forget the Galaxy Note 7 stumble, which had a manufacturing defect in the chassis that compressed the components too much, causing combustion while in use or charging. He had to withdraw it in 2016, claiming that the batteries were the ones that produced that excess heat.

Smartphones have gained prominence in the history of Samsung, being better known for this division than for others.

Semiconductors, key in the history of Samsung

Samsung realized the niche market that was the manufacture of semiconductors. We have to go back to 2006 to see the first strong investment in the history of Samsung in this sector.

It would be in 2010 when it would start producing semiconductors with a 20nm manufacturing process. Three years later, it would go to 10nm FinFET, evolving to 7nm FinFET in 2018. Here, the main rival is TSMC, which is moving at the same pace as the Korean company.

However, Samsung would be the first to produce the first 5nm node, and that would be in 2018. The main semiconductor factories are in South Korea and the company already plans to manufacture 3nm GAAFET semiconductors from 2021.

In addition, all this progress was a benefit for other company businesses, such as RAM memory or SSDs. By 2014, it would become the world's largest semiconductor manufacturer, surpassing Intel.

RAM

In 2001, Samsung made history again by creating DDR2 memory, which offered more frequency, less voltage and DIMM and SO-DIMM modules appeared. We saw from 400 MHz to 1066 MHz.

When 2005 arrives, there is a problem: the operating systems did not support as much RAM, but the video games asked for more. So, in 2007, Samsung decides to market DDR3 memory, which starts from 512 MB of capacity. For the first time, we would see modules of up to 16 GB per unit, achieving 2113 MHz.

Lastly, DDR4 RAM was launched by the same Korean giant in 2014. On this occasion, the voltage was reduced again, memories with more capacity were brought in, and the frequency exceeded 5000 MHz in the latest shipments.

In my opinion, Samsung was ahead of that context because the only platforms that could support it was the LGA 2011-v3 socket, which placed Intel processors for €600.

SSD

SSD technology would hit the market as of 2010, although it had been worked on since 1950, but far from it to the magnitude we are talking about. First, we would see 1 GB SSDs, which would be really expensive.

Samsung started with the 750 EVO line in 2016, at which point it also released a 15.36TB SSD that cost $10,000. We saw the 850 and 860 reach the market in their PRO and EVO ranges, although the best was yet to come.

It marks a point in history after introducing the M.2 NVMe SSD, with read speeds of 3,500 MB/s, as well as 3,300 MB/s write. All drives using NAND Flash produced by Samsung itself were critically acclaimed for their brutal performance and extraordinary reliability.

televisions

We would arrive at 2007 and Samsung introduced the «Internet TV«, which allowed the user to view information online while watching television. Later, he developed the Smart LED TV that allowed the installation of applications on our television. We would soon see the mythical Samsung Apps Store to enjoy a lot of content.

Without a doubt, one of the sectors that has made Samsung the most money, without forgetting its fishing port in Korea. Samsung sold around 31 million televisions in 2009, maintaining the largest market share for the 4th consecutive year.

The year 2010 brought the fashion of 3D LED, something that Samsung "burned" a lot in its marketing campaigns: it sold 1 million TVs in 6 months since its launch. At this time, 3D was "in", so Samsung invested in it:

However, one of the best Smart TV breakthroughs came with Tizen in 2015, the Linux-based operating system. It turned the world of Smart TVs upside down because it offered many functions, a great experience and, especially, a brutal catalog of apps. Right in 2019, it would announce its first television with Apple TV and AirPlay 2.

In this market, it is important to highlight the invention of QLED, a technology similar to OLED, but not quite organic. Samsung took the opportunity to work with Panasonic and 20th Century Fox to create HDR10+ and promote it as a standard. In fact, Amazon Video offers it, as well as Warner Bros and Universal joined the proposal.

Sound

Samsung decides to get fully into the professional sound sector by acquiring Harman International. To put you in a situation, the Harman group contained the following audio brands:

Many audiophiles raised their hands to their heads because they thought they were going to lose them and become Samsung, but they have remained in the market. In fact, Samsung took the opportunity to include AKG headphones for the first time in its Samsung Galaxy S8, headphones that enjoyed great reviews, and whose price was not low.

Therefore, Samsung is an empire that has conquered many technological sectors, earning the respect of many manufacturers. What started with a fish market, would become a technological giant to beat.

We hope you liked this chapter in the history of Samsung. If you have any questions, you can comment on it and we will be happy to solve it.

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What do you think of the Samsung story? Do you consider it to be a company to beat?