The Story of Samsung
A lot of us these days are using Samsung phones and devices, including me. But how did it actually get here? How did it get big?
It all started in Daegu, Korea. In 1938, a small company was founded named Samsung Sanghoe. Not as an electronics company, but as a small and humble trading business. It was founded by Lee Byung-chul. His company sold groceries like dried Korean fish, noodles, and produce.
Lee Byung-chul kept his company running for decades, through war and economic strife. He navigated Samsung through the 20th century, gradually branching into textiles, insurance, and construction.
Entering the tech zone
The Samsung that we all know today began to take shape in 1969, when Samsung Electronics was first founded. So what was its first product? Was it a revolutionary smartphone? No, it was a humble black and white TV. From there, Samsung slowly started building washing machines, refrigerators, and microwaves. But in the 80s, it started to get serious about computing and semiconductors. That was when they released their first mobile phone. It was a simple analog phone named the SH-100, launched in 1988. At that time, it was only available in South Korea. Even then, mobile phones were still a luxury.
The Samsung smartphone rise
Fast forward to the 2000s. That is when Samsung started focusing more heavily on smartphones. In June 2010, they released the Samsung Galaxy S. With a vibrant Super AMOLED screen and sleek design, it became the first true Android competitor to the iPhone.
And it worked. The Samsung Galaxy S was a commercial hit, selling over 25 million units and kicking off a smartphone series that would evolve into one of the most successful in the entire world.
By 2012, Samsung overtook Nokia as the world’s largest smartphone maker, a position it still continues to battle for with Apple.
The Samsung smartphone crisis
By 2016, Samsung was riding high, known as one of the best smartphone makers in the world. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and the S7 were getting glowing reviews. Critics were even calling it the most brilliant phone that ever existed. But then things started to go up in flames, literally.
Soon after the Samsung Galaxy Note 7’s release in August of 2016, reports started coming in of it overheating, and some even catching fire. At first, these were isolated cases. But soon enough, dozens of reports appeared across the globe.
Samsung recalled the phones and blamed a battery defect. But even after the recall, some of the replacements also caught fire. It turned out there was also a design flaw. Two months after it was released, the Samsung Note 7 was taken off the market permanently.
But by that time, the damage had already been done.
- Samsung recalled almost 2.5 million devices
- It cost the company approximately $5 billion
- Airlines around the world banned the phone from flights
- Samsung launched an internal investigation with over 500 researchers and tested 200,000 phones
After the investigation, Samsung made a public apology and introduced major changes to their safety procedures and product testing standards.
Samsung’s redemption
After the Note 7 crisis, Samsung had a lot to prove. That they were reliable. And most importantly, that people could trust their phones. But a few events followed that were quite unbelievable.
- In 2018, a Ukrainian soldier reportedly survived a gunshot thanks to his Samsung Galaxy phone, which absorbed the bullet.
Source: Newsweek – Ukrainian soldier saved by phone (2018) - In November 2015, during a tragic attack near Stade de France, a man walking by was saved by his Samsung phone when debris from an explosion hit him.
Source: The Telegraph – Phone saved man’s life in Paris attacks (2015)
After that, things only started getting better. Today, Samsung is selling folding phones, smartwatches, and more, when all they started with was selling noodles and dried fish in a grocery shop in Korea.