1938–1970 In 1938, during the
Japanese era,
Lee Byung-chul (1910–1987), a member of a large landowning family in
Ginei moved to nearby
Taikyu and founded Mitsuboshi Trading Company (), or
Samsung Sanghoe (). Samsung started out as a small trading company with forty employees located in Su-dong (now Ingyo-dong). It dealt in dried fish, The company prospered and Lee moved its head office to Seoul in 1947. When the
Korean War broke out, he was forced to leave Seoul. He started a
sugar refinery in
Pusan named
Cheil Jedang. In 1954, Lee founded
Cheil Mojik, a textiles company, and built the first plant in Chimsan-dong, Taegu. It was the largest woollen mill in the country at the time of construction. Samsung diversified into various areas as Lee aimed to establish the company as a leader across multiple industries. The business expanded into sectors such as insurance, securities, and retail. In 1947, Cho Hong-jai, the Hyosung group's founder, jointly invested in a new company called Samsung Mulsan Gongsa, or the Samsung Trading Corporation, with the Samsung's founder Lee Byung-chul. The trading firm grew to become the now
Samsung C&T Corporation. After a few years, Cho and Lee separated due to differences in management style. Cho wanted a 30 equity share. Samsung Group was separated into Samsung Group and
Hyosung Group,
Hankook Tire and other businesses. In the late 1960s, Samsung Group entered the electronics industry. It formed several electronics-related divisions, such as Samsung Electronics Devices, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, Samsung Corning and Samsung Semiconductor & Telecommunications, and opened the facility in
Suwon. Its first product was a black-and-white television set. Byung-chul was also the owner of the
Tongyang Broadcasting Company, a private radio and television company that existed from 1964 to 1980, shut down after the Korean government reviewed the number of media outlets allowed. TBC allowed an early success thanks to its connections to Samsung, boosting the sale of its television sets.
1970–1990 , introduced in 1982, was Samsung's first personal computer (sold in the South Korean market only) and used an audio
cassette tape to load and save data – the
floppy drive was optional. In 1980, Samsung acquired the
Kumi-based
Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin and entered telecommunications hardware. Its early products were switchboards. The facility was developed into the telephone and fax manufacturing systems and became the center of Samsung's mobile phone manufacturing. They have produced over 800 million mobile phones to date. The company grouped them together under Samsung Electronics in the 1980s. After Lee, the founder's death in 1987, Samsung Group was separated into five business groupsSamsung Group,
Shinsegae Group,
CJ Group,
Hansol Group and the
JoongAng Group. Shinsegae (discount store, department store) was originally part of Samsung Group, separated in the 1990s from the Samsung Group along with CJ Group (Food/Chemicals/Entertainment/logistics), Hansol Group (Paper/Telecom), and the JoongAng Group (Media). Today these separated groups are independent and they are not part of or connected to the Samsung Group. In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics began to invest heavily in research and development, investments that were pivotal in pushing the company to the forefront of the global electronics industry. In 1982, it built a television assembly plant in Portugal; in 1984, a plant in New York; in 1985, a plant in Tokyo; in 1987, a facility in England; and another facility in
Austin, Texas, in 1996. Samsung has invested more than
US$13 billion in the Austin facility, which operates under the name Samsung Austin Semiconductor. This makes the Austin location the largest foreign investment in
Texas and one of the largest single
foreign investments in the United States. In 1987, United States International Trade Commission found that the Samsung Group of South Korea unlawfully sold computer chips in the United States without licenses from the chip inventor,
Texas Instruments Inc. 1990–2000 Since 1990, Samsung has increasingly globalised its activities and electronics; in particular, its mobile phones and semiconductors have become its most important source of income. It was in this period that Samsung started to rise as an international corporation in the 1990s.
Samsung's construction branch was awarded contracts to build one of the two
Petronas Towers in Malaysia,
Taipei 101 in Taiwan and the
Burj Khalifa in United Arab Emirates. In 1993,
Lee Kun-hee sold off ten of Samsung Group's subsidiaries, downsized the company, and merged other operations to concentrate on three industries: electronics, engineering and chemicals. In 1996, the Samsung Group reacquired the
Sungkyunkwan University foundation. Samsung became the world's largest producer of memory chips in 1992 and is the world's second-largest chipmaker after
Intel (see Worldwide Top 20 Semiconductor Market Share Ranking Year by Year). 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. The same year, it created its first
liquid-crystal display screen. Samsung grew to be the world's largest manufacturer of liquid-crystal display panels. Ten years later,
Sony, which had not invested in large-size
TFT-LCDs, contacted Samsung to cooperate, and, in 2006,
S-LCD was established as a joint venture between Samsung and Sony in order to provide a stable supply of LCD panels for both manufacturers. S-LCD was owned by Samsung (50% plus one share) and Sony (50% minus one share) and operates its factories and facilities in Tanjung, South Korea. it was announced that Samsung had acquired the stake of Sony in this joint venture. Compared to other major Korean companies, Samsung survived the
1997 Asian financial crisis relatively unharmed. However,
Samsung Motor was sold to
Renault at a significant loss. Renault Samsung is 80.1 per cent owned by Renault and 19.9 per cent owned by Samsung. Additionally, Samsung manufactured a range of
aircraft from the 1980s to the 1990s. The company was founded in 1999 as
Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI), the result of a merger between then three domestic major
aerospace divisions of
Samsung Aerospace, Daewoo Heavy Industries and Hyundai Space and Aircraft Company. However, Samsung still manufactures
aircraft engines and
gas turbines.
2000–present , New York City In 2000, Samsung R&D opened a development center in
Warsaw,
Poland. Its work began with set-top-box technology before moving into digital TV and
smartphones. The smartphone platform was developed with partners, officially launched with the original
Samsung Solstice line of devices and other derivatives in 2008, which was later developed into
Samsung Galaxy line of devices including Notes, Edge and other products. (left), with South Korean President
Park Geun-hye, 2013 In 2007, former Samsung chief lawyer Kim Yong Chul claimed that he was involved in
bribing and
fabricating evidence on behalf of the group's chairman,
Lee Kun-hee, and the company. Kim said that Samsung lawyers trained executives to serve as
scapegoats in a "fabricated scenario" to protect Lee, even though those executives were not involved. Kim also told the media that he was "sidelined" by Samsung after he refused to pay a $3.3 million bribe to the U.S. Federal District Court judge presiding over a case where two of its executives were found guilty on charges related to memory chip price-fixing. Kim revealed that the company had raised a large number of secret funds through bank accounts illegally opened under the names of up to 1,000 Samsung executivesunder his own name, four accounts were opened to manage 5 billion
won. In 2010, Samsung announced a ten-year growth strategy centered around five businesses. On 24 August 2012, nine American jurors
ruled that Samsung Electronics had to pay
Apple $1.05 billion in damages for violating six of its patents on smartphone technology. The award was still less than the $2.5 billion requested by Apple. The decision also ruled that Apple did not violate five Samsung patents cited in the case. Samsung decried the decision saying that the move could harm innovation in the sector. It also followed a South Korean ruling stating that both companies were guilty of infringing on each other's intellectual property. In first trading after the ruling, Samsung shares on the
KOSPI fell 7.7%, the largest fall since 24 October 2008, to 1,177,000
South Korean won. Apple then sought to ban the sales of eight Samsung phones (Galaxy S 4G, Galaxy S2
AT&T, Galaxy S2 Skyrocket, Galaxy S2 T-Mobile, Galaxy S2 Epic 4G, Galaxy S Showcase, Droid Charge and Galaxy Prevail) in the United States, but this was denied by the court. the
Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan is investigating Samsung and its local Taiwanese advertising agency for
false advertising. The case was commenced after the commission received complaints stating that the agency hired students to attack competitors of Samsung Electronics in online forums. Samsung Taiwan made an announcement on its
Facebook page in which it stated that it had not interfered with any evaluation report and had stopped online marketing campaigns that constituted posting or responding to content in online forums. In 2015, Samsung has been granted more U.S. patents than any other company. The company received 7,679 utility patents through 11 December. The
Galaxy Note 7 smartphone went on sale on 19 August 2016. However, in early September 2016, Samsung suspended sales of the phone and announced an informal recall. This action was taken after some units of the phones were found to have batteries with a defect that caused them to generate excessive heat, leading to fires and explosions. Samsung replaced the recalled units of the phones with a new version. However, it was later discovered that the new version of the Galaxy Note 7 also had the battery defect. Consequently, Samsung recalled all Galaxy Note 7 smartphones worldwide on 10 October 2016 and permanently ceased production of the phone the following day. In 2018, it inaugurated the world's largest mobile manufacturing facility in
Noida, India, in the presence of
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In 2023, Samsung announced its decision to reduce the production of memory chips. This action is on account of the company's projected 96% decline in quarterly operating profit - a 600 million won decline from the 14 trillion won in 2022. The said drop can be attributed to the weak demand after COVID and a slowing global economy. Despite this decision, the company's shares increased by more than 4%. Samsung has been the top two
applicant for PCT filled
patents in 2022 and 2023 worldwide. Following the grant to Samsung of U.S. Patent No. 9,675,229 and its European counterpart, EP 2963515, both patents were challenged through an ex parte reexamination in the United States and opposition proceedings in Europe. The European patent was revoked in March 2024. The U.S. patent ceased to be in force in June 2025 due to non-payment of maintenance fees, approximately ten years before the end of its full statutory term. On 12 February 2026, Samsung started shipping its most advanced HBM4 chips to unnamed customers as it tries to narrow the gap with rivals in supplying critical parts for Nvidia’s AI accelerators. ==Influence in South Korea==