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Lee Byung-chul founded Samsung starting with a $2,000 trading venture selling noodles and fish to Korea's largest conglomerate.
In 1938, he started by exporting fruit and dried fish to Manchuria with just 40 employees.
By 1987, his final year as chairman, Samsung operated 26 affiliate companies with 168,000 workers.
In 1969, he launched Samsung Electronics with a $330,000 investment in a black-and-white TV factory.
He expanded into semiconductors in 1974 by acquiring Korea Semiconductor, despite skepticism from his advisors.
When the Korean War destroyed his sugar refinery in 1950, he rebuilt it within three months and doubled production capacity.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Samsung secured government contracts and loans through close ties with President Park Chung-hee's regime.
The company received preferential interest rates of 3.5% while standard commercial rates exceeded 15%.
This relationship helped Samsung enter shipbuilding in 1974, when the government granted them the former Woojin Industries shipyard despite having no prior experience in the industry.
Lee Kun-hee led Samsung from 1987 to 2008.
In 1993, he gathered 200 executives in Frankfurt and ordered them to "change everything except your wife and children" — a directive that sparked Samsung's quality revolution.
The company scrapped its entire inventory of phones and semiconductors, worth $50 million.
Under his watch, Samsung's market value grew from $13 billion in 1987 to $200 billion in 2008.
The company captured 31% of the global memory chip market and surpassed Sony to become the world's largest TV manufacturer.
His obsession with quality showed in tangible results: Samsung's mobile phones evolved from cheap plastic devices in the 1990s to the premium Galaxy series that competed directly with Apple's iPhone.
In 1996, Lee bribed former President Roh Tae-woo with $650,000 in slush funds.
In 2008, prosecutors indicted him for creating a $4.5 billion slush fund and orchestrating the illegal transfer of company shares to his son.
He received a 3-year suspended prison sentence but earned a presidential pardon in 2009.
When Yun Jong-Yong became Samsung Electronics' CEO in 1996, the company generated $28 billion in annual revenue.
Revenues later surged to $140 billion by 2008.
He inherited a company ranked 34th in global semiconductor sales and transformed it into the world's largest memory chip maker by 2002.
Yun's reorganization wasn't just a corporate reshuffling—he slashed the workforce by 30%, cutting 24,000 jobs in his first year.
He dismantled the traditional lifetime employment system and introduced merit-based promotions.
Samsung's R&D spending tripled to $6.5 billion annually, and patent filings increased from 7,000 in 1996 to over 30,000 in 2008.
Samsung overtook Sony in TV sales by 2006, captured 20% of the global mobile phone market (up from 7% in 2001), and dominated 67% of the world's memory chip market by 2007.
Fortune magazine recognized these achievements by ranking Samsung Electronics 46th in their Global 500 list in 2008, up from 170th in 1996.
Samsung received a $654 million fine in 2005 for price-fixing in the DRAM market, intense price wars with Japanese firms that slashed LCD panel prices by 40% in 2006, and the emergence of Apple's iPhone in 2007.
All threatening Samsung’s business model.
Oh-Hyun Kwon led Samsung Electronics as CEO from 2012 to 2017, where he expanded the company's focus beyond smartphones and tablets.
He directed $13.6 billion in investments toward IoT devices like smart refrigerators and AI-powered home assistants.
Samsung's semiconductor division became the company's most profitable unit, generating $26 billion in operating profits in 2017 alone.
The division supplied memory chips to competitors including Apple and Sony.
In 2017, Kwon faced a leadership crisis when courts sentenced Samsung Group's heir Jay Y. Lee was sentenced to five years in prison for bribing former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.
This conviction disrupted Samsung's decision-making processes and damaged its public reputation.
Kwon stepped down in October 2017, stating in his resignation letter that Samsung needed younger leadership to compete with emerging Chinese manufacturers and Silicon Valley tech giants.
He advised the board to appoint someone who could better respond to rapid changes in mobile technology and artificial intelligence.
During their tenure from 2018 to 2021, Samsung's three co-CEOs restructured the company's operations.
Ki Nam Kim oversaw semiconductor development, Hyun Suk Kim led consumer electronics, and Dong-Jin Koh managed the mobile division.
They split Samsung into two distinct units: Device Solutions, which produced semiconductors and display panels, and Device Experience, which created smartphones and home appliances.
While Apple sued Samsung for $2.5 billion in 2012 over smartphone patents, the companies maintained their supply relationship.
Samsung provided OLED displays for iPhones, earning $110 million per quarter in 2019 from these sales alone.
The co-CEOs expanded this partnership, making Samsung the primary supplier of iPhone displays through 2021.
Samsung's semiconductor division increased its market share from 14.5% to 16.3%, while smartphone revenue grew by $4.3 billion between 2018 and 2021.
The company invested $17 billion in a new semiconductor plant in Texas and expanded its 5G network equipment business to capture 23% of the global market by 2021.
In December 2021, Samsung split its leadership between two executives with distinct responsibilities.
Kyung Kye-Hyun heads the Device Solutions division, overseeing Samsung's $28 billion semiconductor business, including memory chips and processors.
Han Jong-hee leads the Device Experience division, managing the company's $100 billion consumer products segment, from smartphones to TVs.
Han Jong-hee leveraged his 30-year track record of developing Samsung's premium TV lineup to merge the previously separate mobile and home electronics units.
Under his direction, the combined division now coordinates product development across Samsung's full range of consumer devices, from Galaxy phones to smart appliances.
Kyung Kye-hyun brought 34 years of semiconductor design experience from Samsung Electro-Mechanics, where he specialized in developing advanced memory chips.
His expertise in chip architecture and manufacturing processes guides Samsung's $17 billion investment in new semiconductor facilities in Texas, aimed at competing with TSMC in advanced chip production.
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