Samsung Techwin acquired the German camera manufacturer
Rollei
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for th ...
in 1995. Samsung (
Rollei
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for th ...
) used its optic expertise on the crystals of a new line of 100% Swiss-made watches. But on 11 March 1995, the
Cologne
Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and 3.6 millio ...
District court prohibited the advertising and sale of
Rollei
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for th ...
watches on German territory. In 1999,
Rollei
Rollei () was a German manufacturer of optical instruments founded in 1920 by and in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, and maker of the Rolleiflex and Rolleicord series of cameras. Later products included specialty and nostalgic type films for th ...
management bought out the company.
Samsung lost a chance to revive its failed bid to take over Dutch aircraft maker
Fokker
Fokker was a Dutch aircraft manufacturer named after its founder, Anthony Fokker. The company operated under several different names. It was founded in 1912 in Berlin, Germany, and became famous for its fighter aircraft in World War I. In 191 ...
when other airplane makers rejected its offer to form a consortium. The three proposed partners Hyundai, Hanjin and Daewoo notified the South Korean government that they would not join Samsung Aerospace Industries.
Samsung bought a 40% stake in
AST Research in 1995, in a failed attempt to break into the North American computer market. Samsung was forced to close the California-based computer maker following mass resignations of research staff and a string of losses.
In 1995, Samsung's textile department invested in
FUBU, an American hip hop apparel company, after the founder placed an advertisement asking for funding in The New York Times newspaper.
Samsung Securities Co., Ltd. and
City of London
The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...
-based
N M Rothschild & Sons
Rothschild & Co is a multinational Investment banking, investment bank and financial services company, and the flagship of the Rothschild banking group controlled by the French and British branches of the Rothschild family.
The banking business o ...
(more commonly known simply as Rothschild) have agreed to form a strategic alliance in investment banking business. Two parties will jointly work on cross-border mergers and acquisition deals.
In December 2010, Samsung Electronics bought
MEDISON Co., a South Korean medical-equipment company, the first step in a long-discussed plan to diversify from consumer electronics.
Grandis Inc. – memory developer in July 2011, Samsung announced that it had acquired
spin-transfer torque random access memory (MRAM) vendor Grandis Inc. Grandis will become a part of Samsung's R&D operations and will focus on the development of next-generation random-access memory.
On 26 December 2011, the board of Samsung Electronics approved a plan to buy
Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
's entire stake in their 2004 joint liquid-crystal display (LCD) venture for 1.08 trillion won ($938.97 million).
On 9 May 2012,
mSpot announced that it had been acquired by Samsung Electronics with the intention of a cloud-based music service. The succeeding service was
Samsung Music Hub
Music Hub was a cloud-based music service launched by Samsung. It allowed users to listen to music from a variety of Samsung devices. According to its website, it wanted to create an integrated mobile and web service for listening to music.
Hist ...
.
In December 2012, Samsung announced that it had acquired the privately held storage software vendor NVELO, Inc., based in
Santa Clara, California
Santa Clara (; Spanish for " Saint Clare") is a city in Santa Clara County, California. The city's population was 127,647 at the 2020 census, making it the eighth-most populous city in the Bay Area. Located in the southern Bay Area, the cit ...
. NVELO will become part of Samsung's R&D operations, and will focus on software for intelligently managing and optimizing next-generation Samsung SSD storage subsystems for consumer and enterprise computing platforms.
In January 2013, Samsung announced that it has acquired
medical imaging company
NeuroLogica
Steven Paul Novella (born July 29, 1964) is an American clinical neurologist and associate professor at Yale University School of Medicine. Novella is best known for his involvement in the skeptical movement as a host of ''The Skeptics' Guide t ...
, part of the multinational conglomerate's plans to build a leading medical technology business. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
On 14 August 2014, Samsung acquired
SmartThings, a fast-growing home automation startup. The company did not release the acquisition price, but TechCrunch reported a $200 million price tag when it first caught word of the deal in July 2014.
On 19 August 2014, Samsung said it had acquired U.S. air conditioner distributor
Quietside LLC as part of its push to strengthen its "smart home" business. A Samsung Electronics spokesman said the South Korean company acquired 100 percent of Quietside.
On 3 November 2014, Samsung announced it had acquired
Proximal Data, Inc., a San Diego, California-based pioneer of server-side caching software with I/O intelligence that work within virtualized systems.
On 18 February 2015, Samsung acquired U.S.-based mobile payments firm
LoopPay – This allows Samsung in smartphone transactions.
On 5 March 2015, Samsung acquired small U.S.-based manufacturer of light-emitting diode displays,
YESCO Electronics
YESCO is a privately owned manufacturer of electric signs based in Salt Lake City, founded by Thomas Young in 1920. The company provides design, fabrication, installation and maintenance of signs.
Many notable sign projects have been produce ...
, which focuses on making digital billboards and message signs.
On 5 October 2016, Samsung announced it had acquired
Viv, a company working on
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machine
A machine is a physical system using Power (physics), power to apply Force, forces and control Motion, moveme ...
.
On 15 November 2016, Samsung Canada announced it has acquired
Rich Communications Services, a company working on a new technology for text messaging.
Major clients
Major clients of Samsung include:
; Royal Dutch Shell
: Samsung Heavy Industries will be the sole provider of
liquefied natural gas
Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the v ...
(LNG) storage facilities worth up to US$50 billion to
Royal Dutch Shell
Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...
for the next 15 years.
:Shell unveiled plans to build the world's first
floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) platform. In October 2012 at Samsung Heavy Industries' shipyard on
Geoje Island in South Korea work started on a "ship" that, when finished and fully loaded, will weigh 600,000 tonnes, the world's biggest "ship". That is six times larger than the largest U.S.
aircraft carrier.
United Arab Emirates government
: A consortium of South Korean firms, including Samsung,
Korea Electric Power Corporation and
Hyundai Hyundai is a South Korean industrial conglomerate ("chaebol"), which was restructured into the following groups:
* Hyundai Group, parts of the former conglomerate which have not been divested
** Hyundai Mobis, Korean car parts company
** Hyundai As ...
, won a deal worth $40 billion to build
nuclear power plants in the United Arab Emirates.
Ontario government
: The government of the
Canadian province
Within the geographical areas of Canada, the ten provinces and three territories are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British Nort ...
of
Ontario
Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...
signed off one of the world's largest
renewable energy projects, signing a deal worth $6.6 billion for an additional of new wind and
solar energy
Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the Sun that is harnessed using a range of technologies such as solar power to generate electricity, solar thermal energy (including solar water heating), and solar architecture. It is an ...
. Under the agreement, a consortium led by Samsung and the Korea Electric Power Corporation will manage the development of -worth of new
wind farm
A wind farm or wind park, also called a wind power station or wind power plant, is a group of wind turbines in the same location used to produce electricity. Wind farms vary in size from a small number of turbines to several hundred wind tur ...
s and of solar capacity, while also building a manufacturing supply chain in the province.
Corporate image
File:Past(1938) samsung logo.PNG, First Samsung logo
File:Samsung logo (1960s).png, 1960s–1993, as corporate logo
File:Past(1969-79) samsung logo.PNG, 1970s
File:Samsung-old.gif, 1980–1993, as Samsung Electronics logo
File:Samsung Logo.svg, 1993–current, though still used by other Samsung companies than its electronics segment
File:Samsung wordmark.svg, 2015–current, Samsung Electronics's wordmark and current corporate logo
The basic color in the logo is blue, which Samsung has employed for years, supposedly symbolizing stability, reliability and
corporate social responsibility
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a form of international private business self-regulation which aims to contribute to societal goals of a philanthropic, activist, or charitable nature by engaging in or supporting volunteering or ethicall ...
.
Audio logo
Samsung has an audio logo, which consists of the notes E♭, A♭, D♭, E♭; after the initial E♭ tone it is up a perfect fourth to A♭, down a perfect fifth to D♭, then up a major second to return to the initial E♭ tone. The audio logo was produced by
Musikvergnuegen
Musikvergnuegen (), sometimes abbreviated to ''MusikV'', is a music and sound design production company located in Los Angeles, California. The company name translates into English as "enjoyment of music". It was founded by Austrian-born composer W ...
and written by
Walter Werzowa. This audio logo is discontinued as of 2015.
Font
In 2014, Samsung unveiled its Samsung Sharp Sans font.
In July 2016, Samsung unveiled its SamsungOne font, a typeface that hopes to give a consistent and universal visual identity to the wide range of Samsung products. SamsungOne was designed to be used across Samsung's diverse device portfolio, with a focus on legibility for everything from smaller devices like smartphones to larger connected TVs or refrigerators, as well as Samsung marketing and advertisements. The font family supports 400 different languages through over 25,000 characters.
Sponsorships
Samsung Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (, sometimes shortened to SEC and stylized as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean multinational electronics corporation headquartered in Yeongtong-gu, Suwon, South Korea. It is the pinnacle of the Samsung chaebol, a ...
spent an estimated $14 billion (U.S.) on advertising and
marketing
Marketing is the process of exploring, creating, and delivering value to meet the needs of a target market in terms of goods and services; potentially including selection of a target audience; selection of certain attributes or themes to empha ...
in 2013. At 5.4% of annual revenue, this is a larger proportion than any of the world's top-20 companies by sales (
Apple
An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple trees are cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus '' Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, where its wild ances ...
spent 0.6% and
General Motors spent 3.5%). Samsung became the world's biggest advertiser in 2012, spending $4.3 billion, compared to Apple's $1 billion. Samsung's global brand value of $39.6 billion is less than half that of Apple.
Controversies
Labor abuses
Samsung was the subject of several complaints about
child labor
Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such ...
in its supply chain from 2012 to 2015.
In July 2014, Samsung cut its contract with Shinyang Electronics after it received a complaint about the company violating child labor laws.
Samsung says that its investigation turned up evidence of Shinyang using underage workers and that it severed relations immediately per its "zero tolerance" policy for child labor violations.
One of Samsung's Chinese supplier factories, HEG, was criticized for using underage workers by
China Labor Watch (CLW) in July 2014. HEG denied the charges and has sued China Labor Watch. CLW issued a statement in August 2014 claiming that HEG employed over ten children under the age of 16 at a factory in
Huizhou
Huizhou ( zh, c= ) is a city in central-east Guangdong Province, China, forty-three miles north of Hong Kong. Huizhou borders the provincial capital of Guangzhou to the west, Shenzhen and Dongguan to the southwest, Shaoguan to the north, Hey ...
,
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020 ...
. The group said the youngest child identified was 14 years old. Samsung said that it conducted an onsite investigation of the production line that included one-on-one interviews but found no evidence of child labor being used. CLW responded that HEG had already dismissed the workers described in its statement before Samsung's investigators arrived.
[
CLW also claimed that HEG violated overtime rules for adult workers. CLW said a female college student was only paid her standard wage despite working four hours of overtime per day even though Chinese law requires overtime pay at 1.5 to 2.0 times standard wages.][
In 2020, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute accused at least 82 major brands, including Samsung, of being connected to forced Uyghur labor in ]Xinjiang
Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwest ...
.
Union-busting activity
Samsung has a no-union policy and has been engaged in union-busting activities around the world. Samsung has also been sued by a union for stealing the corpse of a dead worker. On 6 May 2020, Samsung vice chairman Lee Jae-yong
Lee Jae-yong (; born 23 June 1968), known professionally in the West as Jay Y. Lee, is a South Korean business magnate and the
chairman of Samsung Electronics. He is the only son of Hong Ra-hee and Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung until his d ...
apologized for the union-busting scandals.
2007 Slush Fund scandal
Kim Yong-chul, the former head of the legal department at Samsung's Restructuring Office, and Catholic Priests Association for Justice uncovered Lee Kun-hee's slush fund on 29 October 2007. He presented a list of 30 artworks that the Lee family purchased with some of the slush funds, which were to be found in Samsung's warehouse in south of Seoul
Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the Capital city, capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the North Korea, Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea ...
, along with documents about bribes to prosecutors, judges and lawmakers, tax collectors with thousands of borrowed-named bank account.
The court sentenced Lee Kun-hee to 3 years imprisonment, 5 years probation imprisonment, and fined him 11 billion won. But on 29 December 2009, the South Korean president Lee Myung-bak specially pardoned Lee, stating that the intent of the pardon was to allow Lee to remain on the International Olympic Committee
The International Olympic Committee (IOC; french: link=no, Comité international olympique, ''CIO'') is a non-governmental sports organisation based in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is constituted in the form of an association under the Swis ...
. It is the only independent amnesty to have occurred in South Korean history.
Kim Yong-chul published a book 'Thinking about Samsung' in 2010. He wrote detailed accounts of Samsung's behavior and how the company lobbied governmental authorities including the court officials, prosecutors and national tax service officials for transferring Samsung's management rights to Lee Jae-yong
Lee Jae-yong (; born 23 June 1968), known professionally in the West as Jay Y. Lee, is a South Korean business magnate and the
chairman of Samsung Electronics. He is the only son of Hong Ra-hee and Lee Kun-hee, chairman of Samsung until his d ...
.
Lee Kun-hee's prostitution scandal
In July 2016, the investigative journal KCIJ-Newstapa released a video of Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee's prostitution and alleged years long employment of female sex workers. On 12 April 2018, Supreme Court of Korea
The Supreme Court of Korea () is the highest ordinary court in the judicial branch of South Korea, seated in Seocho, Seoul. Established under Chapter 5 of the Constitution of South Korea, the Court has ultimate and comprehensive jurisdicti ...
sentenced the former general manager of CJ CheilJedang, who filmed the prostitution video, to four years and six months in prison for blackmail and intimidation.
Supporting far-right groups
The investigative team of special prosecutors looking into the 2016 South Korean political scandal announced that the Blue House
Cheong Wa Dae ( ko, 청와대; Hanja: ; ), also known as the Blue House, is a public park that formerly served as the executive office and official residence of the president of South Korea from 1948 to 2022. It is located in the Jongno distr ...
received money from South Korea’s four largest chaebols (Samsung, Hyundai Motor Group
The Hyundai Motor Group (HMG; ; ; stylized as HYUΠDAI) is a South Korean ''chaebol'' (loosely similar to a multinational conglomerate but without a central holding company or ownership structure) headquartered in Seoul, South Korea.
The HMG ...
, SK Group and LG Group) to fund pro-government demonstrations by conservative and far-right organizations such as the Korean Parent Federation (KPF) and the Moms Brigade.
Price fixing
On 19 October 2011, Samsung companies were fined €145,727,000 for being part of a price cartel of ten companies for DRAMs which lasted from 1 July 1998 to 15 June 2002. The companies received, like most of the other members of the cartel, a 10% reduction for acknowledging the facts to investigators. Samsung had to pay 90% of their share of the settlement, but Micron avoided payment as a result of having initially revealed the case to investigators.
In Canada, during 1999, some DRAM microchip manufacturers conspired to price fix, among the accused included Samsung. The price fix was investigated in 2002. A recession started to occur that year, and the price fix ended; however, in 2014, the Canadian government reopened the case and investigated silently. Sufficient evidence was found and presented to Samsung and two other manufacturers during a class action lawsuit
A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action ...
hearing. The companies agreed upon a $120 million agreement, with $40 million as a fine, and $80 million to be paid back to Canadians who purchased a computer, printer, MP3 player, gaming console or camera from April 1999 to June 2002.
Misleading claims
In Australia during 2022, Australia's competition and consumer commission fined Samsung AU$14 million. The fine came due to misleading water resistance claims for over 3.1 million smartphones. The commission stated that during 2016–2018 the company advertised its Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, A5, A7, S8, S8 Plus and Note 8 devices as able to survive short immersion in water. However, after many user complaints about the devices having issues after water submersion, such as charger port corrosion. The ACC have officially labelled the fact these devices have "water resistance" listed as a feature misleading and proceeded with the fine.
References
Samsung Announces 2022 Neo QLED TV Line-Up Across EuropeBreaking the Rules with Samsung Galaxy Tab S8 Series: The Biggest, Boldest, Most Versatile Galaxy Tablet Ever
External links
*
{{Authority control
1938 establishments in Korea
Companies based in Seoul
Conglomerate companies established in 1938
Conglomerate companies of South Korea
Holding companies of South Korea
Multinational companies headquartered in South Korea
Lee family (South Korea)
Mobile phone manufacturers