News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by hocuspocus on Sunday April 12, 2020 @10:13AM (#22848357)
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.
Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by pcr910303 on Sunday April 12, 2020 @10:22AM (#22848416)
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.

Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by baybal2 on Sunday April 12, 2020 @11:17AM (#22848762)
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.

Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by kijin on Sunday April 12, 2020 @12:36PM (#22849305)
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.

Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by hocuspocus on Sunday April 12, 2020 @10:29AM (#22848463)
Though less profitable, mobile is roughly the same size as device solutions (semiconductors + displays): https://www.sammobile.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/samsung...
Re:“Samsung Rising” goes deep on corruption, chaebols, and c... by dba7dba on Sunday April 12, 2020 @12:44PM (#22849357)
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.