Samsung was founded in 1938 in what is now South Korea. The company, whose name means ‘Three Stars’, was originally a simple trading company, dealing in dried fish, groceries and noodles. During the Korean War the company was forced to relocate to Seoul, the Korean capital, where it expanded to the point where the company and its employee housing complex have become a fully-fledged suburb of the city – Samsung Town. It was not until the late 1960s that Samsung entered the electronics market, manufacturing a basic blackand-white television set. In 1980, Samsung bought out a company which manufactured telephone switchboards and other telecom equipment: this was to be the start of the company's meteoric success in the mobile phone market.

Prior to the 1980s, electronics theory held that mobile phones would be impossible to build. The theory was that they would require an impossibly large power source, and would also take up an impossibly large bandwidth in the electromagnetic spectrum – in other words, mobile phones violated the laws of physics. However, engineers being engineers, a solution was found: each phone would operate in a small, local area defined as a ‘cell’, connecting via local stations and using extremely high radio frequencies. Phones could switch between cells instantly if the user was in a vehicle, or even walking. 

This shift in technology opened up a huge opportunity for Samsung, and the company seized upon it (as did many others). Samsung began to invest heavily in research and development, designing silicon chips (the basic components in computer processors and memory), and LCD displays, which are a Samsung invention. Samsung is now the world's largest chip manufacturer, and was approached by Sony for help in designing and producing LCD screens. Samsung has been awarded more US patents than any other company in the world, and its facility in Texas is one of the USA's biggest foreign investments. 

Case study questions 

1. What is Samsung's relationship to the technological environment? 

2. Why do people want to buy the latest phones? 

3. What were the driving forces behind the adoption of smartphones? 

4. What effect have mobile phones had on the social environment? 

5. What might be the limiting factors on further development of the smartphone market?