Literature Review Of Samsung Company

Samsung electronics which was founded in 1969 is the largest IT company in terms of business
volume in the world. Most prominently the company functioned in semiconductor, display panel,
consumer electronics, and hand-held devices sector. From the South Korean state point of view, the
electronics industry prior of the 19070s were assembling imported parts while in 1966, Ministry of
trade and industry (MTI) decided to focus on the electronics industry and promoting a 5 years
promotion plan. This allows Samsung to develop into a highly export-driven company. Government
supports comes in 2 different forms, the market influence, and political influence. In the take off the
stage of internationalization, as a part of the Government- Chaebol relationship; supported and issued
incentives to Samsung. This was also further governed by the strict goals set by the policies makers.

Another observation by scholars also identified that Samsung was Market seeking displaying strong
ownership in physically distant markets by accumulating experience. Samsung adopted a latecomer
mimetic strategy in entering the global market. Patinkin (1989) further confirms that Samsung in the
electronics industry serves as the optimal example of a catch-up generic strategy. In the field of Semi-
conductor, which Samsung had no prior experience on, Samsung hired scientist and researchers from
existing companies such as IBM and Intel; set up R&D facility in Silicon Valley at the heart of
competition of the semi-conductor sector. In the 1980s, Samsung developed from being a follower/
latecomer into the market leader in memory chips. Despite entering into the industry later than
companies such as the NEC and Micron from US, Samsung rapidly caught up in terms of
technological advances, revenue and market share twice fold of 20. 1% compared to Micron's 9. 2% in
the DRAM sector; which was the area of which would later on to become an important piece of
technological ownership for internal hardware in modern mobile device. However, this foresight was
credited not towards the government support of the electronics industry, but towards the Chaebol's
foresight of the future and prospect of the semiconductor impact on future devices. In turn, giving the
Chaebol an upper hand in dealing/bargaining with the South Korea government.

In the present, Samsung remains in the innovation-driven stage due to their enormous and centralized
corporate structure. The capabilities in contributing to Samsung success could be summarised below.

Creation speed competency - Adopted a vertical integration, goal driven fast pace management speed
as well as speed in making an investment decision and seizing opportunities. Synergy was also
attained through strong leadership by the owner which practices flexibility in management,
diversification, unified marketing network and clustered operation and servicing. Samsung also has a
strong internal leveraging capability in utilizing learned technology knowledge across all their product.