Samsung Electronics is huge on its own (when I worked there, I think it made more money than all the other companies of the group combined). Of course, the Note 7 crisis was fairly small, even within the scale of the mobile division, employees still got their 50% profit sharing bonus that year. But it still tells you a lot about the kind of pressure there is on internal teams and external suppliers.

Well, Samsung Electronics is a fairly big company (60% of total Samsung AFAIR), but itself has 147 departments. If I remember correctly, the digital gadget department isn’t that big - the biggest ones are the semiconductor one and the display one. And still the digital gadget department could handle the Note 7 callback on it’s own, if I recall correctly, so I can’t really call it a ‘crisis’ for Samsung.

Edit: Turns out I wasn't remembering correctly, the digital gadget department is big enough.

Samsung Group is not the whole of "Samsung," and the whole Samsung is not the whole of Lee's family holdings.

For example, Dongil is another big industrial, and engineering group coexisting completely in parallel to Samsung, but they been buying and selling businesses from Lee's family as far as record goes.

Other well-known companies run by the Lee family include CJ and Shinsegae.

CJ is the largest producer of sugar and flour in Korea, and they also sell every kind of processed and frozen foods. They also own the largest courier service in Korea, the largest cinema chain and film studio, several restaurant and coffee brands, a chain of cosmetics stores, biomedical services, and a dozen cable channels. They literally supply the whole country with both panem and circenses, and they deliver to your doorstep. It's vertical integration at its finest.

Shinsegae is a retail giant. They own a chain of department stores as well as the e-mart shopping mall. The latter has sprouted its own chain of Costco-like discount stores and convenience stores.

If you ever wondered who owns the "CU" brand of convenience stores that are ubiquitous in Korea, they are in-laws of the founder of Samsung. The same family owns the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, which together with the JTBC news channel comprise the second largest media conglomerate after CJ. Oh, and they also own the third largest cinema chain in Korea.

The Lee family is also into furniture, paper, you name it. They used to make cars and planes, too.

All these companies aren't always on friendly terms with one another, as some of them have split from Samsung decades ago and compete with one another. But together they control such a huge portion of the country's commerce, news, and entertainment that the phrase "Republic of Samsung" comes up whenever a member of the Lee family is accused of wrongdoing.

Though less profitable, mobile is roughly the same size as device solutions (semiconductors + displays): https://www.sammobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/samsung...

A few years ago, annual profit of Samsung Electronics was greater than the combined profit of top 7 or 8 (?) Japanese electronic firms. Including Sony.

You could probably go cradle to grave experiencing your entire life in nothing but Samsung (or companies related by family) goods.

It's interesting to note that Samsung's yearly revenue is about 10% of the South Korean GDP. I'm not sure I can think of an American example that's even close.

Can you go more into why you aren’t positive about Samsung?

Not who you're responding to, but for just one possible reason look at Lee Jae-Yong. He's the head of Samsung and was arrested in 2017 for bribery, embezzlement, etc. Chaebols (name for families that run these mega-companies) are both respected for success and disliked for corruption as I understand it.

While there are these mega-companies in RoK and Japan that have especially "close" relationships with governments, I don't think it's that dissimilar from the revolving door of lobbyists/board members/politicians in the US. Citizens in the US are similarly critical of corruption at this level in pharma, tobacco, military, etc.

At the same time, these companies are all responsible to varying degrees for the success of the economy and first-world lifestyle in the US, Japan, RoK. So you can't just want them not to exist either.

Keiretsu-type groups that do everything in-house can prevent whole business sectors from emerging.

In Japan the relative lack of independent software companies have been attributed to Keiretsu structure. Software development was just in-house activity to serve established product divisions. It was not seen as business to be sold independently. For example, Toyota made whole integrated CAD/CAM/CAE system called 'TOGO' in the late 90s.

As a result Japan has been mostly no-show in software business outside console games. Software they develop is sold inside hardware.

Agreed, historically anyway. Older Koreans (judging by my in-laws) hear "computer science" or "programming" and think of computer repairmen.

Oddly enough, Korea and Japan have even higher percentage of SMBs than in the US (can't remember the link but the OECD published such stats). However historically they served only as subcontractors to the chaebols and keiretsu groups.

I think that's changing in Korea and Japan as of recently. In the last 20 years, there has been a rise in startups serving massive audiences in online gaming, social media, and e-commerce. Think Nexon, Daum, Naver/LINE, Rakuten, SoftBank, etc.

IIRC, one big type of sector that they received flak for when they moved into it was bakeries. Food is one sector in Korea with a lot of SMBs, and at the time it looked like they were trying to steal even more of the economy for themselves.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120126001019

Corruption, bribing, tax-evasion, spying, fraud, sabotage

Use of prison labor.

If Samsung and apple are at Medium quality product then what is a high quality product because I must be missing out.

They aren't like apple more Like GE they do everything. The sell appliances. They sell you life insurance. They do construction. They do oil and gas. They sell cars.