SAMSUNG Is Chosen By Brandchannel Readers As The Brand That Had The Second Most Impact In 2004

SAMSUNG Is Chosen By Brandchannel Readers As The Brand That Had The Second Most Impact In 2004

Samsung Electronic’s high ranking at number 25 on the list doesn’t mean it has the competition beat. Sony came in at 20, a position it has basically owned for the last three years (21 in 2002, 20 in 2001). But Samsung’s upward rise from 42 in 2001 to 34 in 2002 to its present position at 25 indicates that the brand has gathered momentum against its competition. The whole possibility would have seemed unlikely to many observers just five or six years ago. At that time, Samsung was seen as a low-quality brand in a tough consumer electronic industry (Korean companies in general were associated with corporate scandal and Asia was in a financial crisis).

Today the brand’s parent company, Samsung Group, is the number one business group in South Korea edging out Hyundai Group. Total sales for 2002 were reported at won 146,052 billion (US$ 116.8B; €110.4B). Founded in 1938, the chaebol now comprises 14 listed companies, including divisions in credit cards, chemicals and securities.

But it is Samsung’s electronics’ arm that is perhaps most visible to the public with consumer products like flat-screen TVs, mobile phones and microwave ovens. Less visible to the public, but comprising a large part of Samsung’s revenue, is its manufacture of semiconductor chips, a highly cyclical industry. As the world’s top memory chip maker, Samsung hit a bump when chip prices fell in the second quarter of this year, down 41 percent from the first half of last year. However, analysts expect profits to increase as sales of computers rise in the second half of 2003. (Memory chips are used to store data in equipment such as computers, digital TVs, digital cameras, and MPR3 players; Samsung’s dominance in this field is not to be confused with Intel Corporation’s success as the world’s largest producer of microprocessors.)

Read the complete Press Release