Samsung - Another Milestone Crossed

Samsung breaks $100bn barrier and becomes one of only four Asian companies to top $100 billion in market value.The South Korean giant is also now second in size to Vodafone among non-US technology stocks.From a black & white TV producer from Asia in 1969 to what its is today – Samsung has come a long way. As we covered earlier in Glittering Samsung,the company being more vertically integrated ,supplying its own needs or buying from close associate group firms has become enormously useful with the model as digital convergence has blurred product categories. Samsung electronics is investing heavily. Research and development accounted for $2.9bn in 2003, around 8% of revenue and more money will be spent on brand-building. A decade ago, Samsung was mostly seen as a producer of cheap televisions and microwave ovens. Today Samsung dominates in most of the areas it operates in: Memory chips- DRAM (Mkt share -31.4%), Memory chips –flash (Mkt share 21%),Flat panels (TFT-LCD) (Mkt share23.3%) and in mobiles next only to Nokia (Mkt share -13.8%) Samsung is among the most widely held emerging market shares, with a market cap of 62 billion USD; by that measure it is already worth far more than Sony.