'50세' 삼성전자, 매출 4,370,000배•고용 2,800배 '폭풍 성장'
This coming Sunday, South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its founding.
And ahead of that occasion,... our Ko Roon-hee walks us through the past half-century that saw Samsung grow from a tiny local operation to a multi-billion dollar brand known around the world.
Samsung Electronics was established as a corporation on January 13th, 1969.
In its first year, the company's sales were a mere 33-thousand U.S. dollars.
During its early years, the firm mainly focused on producing home electronics such as TVs, washing machines and refrigerators for the domestic market.
At the time, its sales were significantly lower than its local rival, Goldstar, currently known as LG Electronics.
The company's fortunes started to change in 1984, when Samsung Electronics' sales recorded more than one-point-two billion dollars,... .surpassing LG Electronics for the first time.
The boom came as Samsung Electronics moved into the global market,.. mass producing color TVs and exporting them around the world.
In 1980, Samsung Electronics merged with Samsung Semiconductor,... helping the company to break into the semiconductor market.
Samsung's record-breaking milestones included developing the world's first 64 megabit DRAM in 1992.
Samsung Electronics continued to grow rapidly,... but it wasn't until the turn of the century that annual profits began to regularly pour in by the tens of billions of dollars.
Samsung Electronics posted sales of around 51-point-6 billion dollars in 2004.
By 2010, that figure had swelled to more than 100 billion.
In 2017, the South Korean tech giant posted record earnings on strong chip sales.
It was an amount four-point-three-seven million times higher than its first year sales in 1969.
As the company expanded, its workforce exploded as well.
As of the third quarter of last year, Samsung Electronics employed more than 103-thousand people in South Korea.
Globally, it had more than 320-thousand workers on its books as of 2017.
Local corporate tracker Korea CXO Institute says Samsung's success can be attributed to its endless innovation, bold investment, and globalization in products and services.
The institute said such moves were only possible because of talented owners and professional businessmen working at the company over the years.
Ko Roon-hee, Arirang News.
