Anyone who hears the name Samsung today often first thinks of smartphones or televisions. The Samsung Group has many other mainstays in addition to the manufacture of electronic products. Here are five facts about the tech giant that you probably didn’t know.
It all started with dried fish 85 years ago. Entrepreneur Byung-Chull Lee (1910-1987) founded Samsung on March 1, 1938 in the South Korean city of Daegu. The company initially focused on the export of foodstuffs, including vegetables, fruits and fish. A few years later, the company already had its own grain mills and machines for manufacturing confectionery, among other things. However, the electronics division Samsung Electronics was added much later.
The oval Samsung logo that almost everyone knows today was introduced in 1993. Previously there were three stars in the logo. According to the company, “Samsung” means “three stars” in Korean, and Byung-Chull Lee chose the name at the time because he said he had a vision of his company becoming as enduring and powerful as stars in the sky.
Samsung is now active in many areas through different branches. For example, the conglomerate also includes a shipyard and an insurance company. Samsung Electronics was founded in 1969 and, according to the company, had more than 266,000 employees in 74 countries at the end of 2021. As a construction company, Samsung was also instrumental in the construction of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest skyscraper in the world.
The South Koreans recently introduced new models of their well-known Galaxy smartphone series. However, this name is not limited to mobile phones, laptops or tablets. The group also had its own factory e-sports team, which was named “Samsung Galaxy” as of 2013. At the “League of Legends” World Championships in 2014, the team was able to secure the title.
Although the Samsung SPH-N270 is far behind the possibilities of modern smartphones, the cell phone was probably a must-have for some fans of the “Matrix” film series 20 years ago. Also called “Matrix Phone”, the limited edition was based on a device from the second part of the film series (“The Matrix Reloaded”), but it did not go down particularly well in the trade press. At the time, the tech portal “CNET” criticized the high price of 500 US dollars for a cell phone, which felt “more like a toy than a reliable communication device”.
