Online journal Ars Technica recently posted an interesting gallery of photos of Samsung's cell phones from 1988 to the present. It tells the tale of the company's long slow progression from a beginner to a dominant force.
According to the Ars Technica report Samsung's mobile initiative started in 1983, although its first successful handset didn't ship until 1988. The company now vies with Apple for market leadership, both of which have left former market leaders Nokia, Eriksson, and Motorola struggling behind.
How does Samsung do that?
I often describe Samsung as a: "Slow-moving steamroller - you know exactly where it's going, and your only option is to get out of the way."
Samsung has a fetish for market dominance. Whether that's good or not is a matter of opinion - I think that focusing on profits might be wiser. In semiconductors Samsung achieved leadership in mask ROM, SRAM, and NOR, none of which was determined to be a good fit, and all of which have been abandoned. It also dominates DRAM, NAND, and LCD screens, and those businesses seem to better match Samsung's strengths of shipping high unit volumes of undifferentiated low-mix products.
One thing that Samsung does extremely well, though, is to establish a goal (i.e. "Dominate the cell phone market") then communicate that objective throughout the organization to get everyone to march in step until it is accomplished.
In the 1990s someone at Samsung told me that the company wanted to become the world leader in semiconductors. It is taking a long time for the company to crack that nut!
The market research firm IC Insights recently published a report that found Samsung to be the leading vendor of image sensors (the chip right behind the lens in any digital camera) and LEDs. By my criteria above LEDs make a lot of sense for Samsung, but I am not positive about image sensors.
Samsung's strength is in dominating high unit volume markets for undifferentiated low-mix products. LEDs ship in the tens of billions. I would suspect that fewer than 500 million image sensors ship every year, which may not be a good fit for the company.
As with any company, though, the goal is not to have a 100% success rate - the goal is to have wins that more than offset its losses. In Samsung's case the company has dominated markets that have been a good match and it has dominated markets it should not have entered, but the successes have outweighed the failures to bring the company the strength that it enjoys today.
