Samsung

There is not one single thing that makes Samsung a formidable power in the technology industry but many strategies, ideas, and innovative technology to give them a sustainable advantage over competitors. Over years, Samsung went from a near-bankrupt company to a leading brand in chip and computing technology. Their scale of new products, including PDA’s, cell phones, high quality TVs, mp3 players, and other computer-based products, along with the scale of customers and newly hired young talent in their research and development department have helped Samsung rise to compete with electronics powers such as Sony. A statistic that shows that Samsung is highly scalable and has a popular brand is their control of a third of the world’s DRAM market and about half of the NAND market. In less than a decade, Samsung has taken their risk of investing in new memory-chip capacity and rode the gravy train to becoming a profitable electronics company, wiping out $10billion of debt during the process. Also, to better their brand, the CEO Yun Jong Yong declared that Samsung would not have anything to do with low-end televisions or air-conditioners, but would represent sophisticated and innovative phones and other high-end appliances, because the continual sales of low-end products would tarnish their corporate image. In order to move their high-end appliances to the consumers, Samsung left Wal-Mart because of its incompatibility with the company image as an electronics power, and went to retail giants such as Best Buy and CompUSA, who were better fit for selling their products. Selling their products through specialty retailers was a key to getting the merchandise to the right customers but Samsung took a step further and setup mass marketing campaigns with 54 different ad agencies and sponsored the Sydney Olympic Games to get their brand out to the potential consumers. Samsung, at large in the USA but still growing, owes this foreign success due to their alliance with Sprint PCS. Putting out merchandise made by Samsung on shelves was not enough. Samsung’s secret was not only to come up with innovative products, but also to get these products out to retailers as soon as possible, hoping to beat their competition. This strategy was following the “Sashimi Theory” which basically meant that anything fresh and new will sell more and for more while anything that is left to dry will lose value and eventually will be useless. The value of moving early is clearly a profitable advantage that Samsung is not taking for granted. Because Sony is such a powerful electronics company, Samsung took every advantage they could, by moving early, building brand, increasing scale and quality of products, but also tries to exceed its counterpart through design, user-friendly technology and pricing. This differentiation challenged Sony to focus on improving its stylish designs further, match products that