Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
Most main tech corporations, like Fb, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and plenty of others, have humble beginnings, based in basements, garages, dorm rooms, or makeshift residence workplaces. However whereas many of those corporations have been within the tech, or at the very least tech-adjacent, area, the origins of loads of tech giants in Asia and Europe aren’t as simple. Nicely earlier than turning into the largest identify in Android and making our favourite telephones at the moment, Samsung used to promote noodles.
A grocery retailer at first
Lee Byung-Chull based Samsung in 1938 in Taegu (now often known as Daegu), with simply 30,000 gained (the present equal of round $23), as a buying and selling firm that offered and exported dried fish, fruits, greens, and its personal noodles. Samsung’s identify suggests lofty ambitions, and that was true even again then, though its first deliberate enlargement to Seoul got here to an abrupt halt after the Korean Struggle broke out in 1947.
After the battle, Samsung expanded into the textile enterprise, constructing, on the time, the most important wool mill in Korea. Lee additionally began a sugar refinery in Busan, expanded into retail, securities, and insurance coverage by means of acquisition, and targeted closely on industrialization to assist the nation get better and rebuild after the battle. It wasn’t till 1969 that Samsung Electronics, the department that offers the corporate world, mainstream recognition, was born.
The Samsung we all know at the moment
Whereas Samsung has a major maintain in quite a lot of industries, Samsung Electronics accounts for almost all of its enterprise now. The journey of one of many world’s largest telephone and electronics corporations started in 1969. The corporate’s first client product was a black-and-white TV, and over the subsequent decade, it produced colour TVs, calculators, fridges, air conditioners, and extra. By 1981, Samsung reached the milestone of creating its 10 millionth tv set, solely three years after reaching the 5 million mark.
Samsung launched its first cellular phone in 1988, and although the SH-100 was a business disappointment, the corporate persevered with new fashions yearly. Its first style of economic success was with the SH-770 in 1994, and a yr later, greater than half of the cellphones offered in Korea have been from Samsung. Even within the years main as much as its Android smartphone domination, Samsung gave stalwarts like Motorola and Nokia a run for his or her cash.
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
Samsung’s first forays into the Android world have been respectable sufficient, nevertheless it wasn’t till the Galaxy S3 that the corporate grew to become the main pressure within the smartphone business that it stays at the moment. From pioneering the “phablet” with the Galaxy Be aware to main the cost within the foldable market, Samsung stays an modern chief within the smartphone area. And its smartphones are perpetual entries on our greatest Android telephone roundups, with loads of choices throughout the value and have spectrum.
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
After all, whereas we are likely to deal with Android units like smartphones, tablets, and wearables right here at Android Authority, Samsung can also be a market chief within the common client electronics market, making Home windows laptops, Chromebooks, audio merchandise, televisions, and residential home equipment, together with merchandise that aren’t direct-to-consumer like semiconductors, processors, shows, and a lot extra.
What else does Samsung do
Samsung accounts for almost a fifth of South Korea’s GDP, and whereas its electronics division is the main contributor, the corporate as an entire is sort of various. Among the many firm’s many associates is Samsung Heavy Industries, one of many world’s largest shipbuilders. Within the development sector, there’s Samsung Engineering and Samsung C&T Company, the latter of which was concerned in establishing the world’s tallest constructing, the Burj Khalifa.
Samsung can also be concerned within the insurance coverage sector with Samsung Life Insurance coverage, Samsung Everland owns and operates the Everland Resort, one of many oldest theme parks in South Korea, and Cheil Worldwide, an promoting company, additionally falls below the corporate’s wing. From accommodations and resorts to medical facilities and vogue, Samsung International and its associates are concerned in nearly each business you’ll be able to consider.
So the subsequent time you’re on a cruise ship watching a video of the Burj Khalifa on a smartphone, pill, laptop computer, or tv whereas sporting Bluetooth earbuds, know that there would possibly simply be one firm that made all of it occur. And it began with noodles.