Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant That Set Out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech by Geoffrey Cain
Samsung is not one company, but a group of affiliated companies that span multiple industries. They all trace their history to the single founder and remain controlled by the same family. It is the largest of the Korean chaebols and is "too big to fail." Leaders of Samsung have been convicted of crimes, such as bribery, but are often pardoned "in the interest of the country". Organizations such as a pension fund will vote out of their best interests to support Samsung. (In one case, they took a big loss in order to help support a complicated succession plan.) The company has been around for less than a century, being founded shortly before World War II. It has been involved in more mundane activities such as groceries. With support of Korean government it grew and expanded to other fields. It saw opportunities in electronics and microchips and took the plunge. Initially the products were low quality imitations, but gradually it grew to improve quality and marketing. It has a huge share of the market for certain chips and cell phones.
Despite its position, Samsung remains firmly controlled by family. (Though people have been sued for comparing the leader of Samsung to the leader of North Korea.) When things go wrong, the tendency is to deflect blame. The company quickly launched a recall, but focussed on blaming a certain supplier. When replacement ones failed, they were left with a big problem that they did not handle well.
Samsung has also had trouble with acquisitions. They tend to implement their top down control even if that causes problems with the acquired company. The Samsung culture is very hard working. However, it does have difficulty responding to external criticism. Samsung is tries to stay out of media which it cannot fully control.
