54 Fun Facts About Samsung

What does the name Samsung mean in Korean?

Three stars: the founder wanted a company as powerful and everlasting as stars in the sky.

Where did Samsung's first business export dried fish?

Manchuria, and by the early 1950s the founder had branched out into sugar refining.

Who founded Samsung?

Lee Byung-chul started it with 30,000 won, and his son Lee Kun-hee and grandson Lee Jae-yong went on to lead the company.

Which Japanese company partnered Samsung in a 1969 electronics joint venture?

Sanyo was the partner, and the Samsung-Sanyo venture went on to become part of today's Samsung Electronics.

South Korea's family-controlled conglomerates, such as Samsung, are known by what Korean word?

Chaebol is written with the same characters as zaibatsu, the prewar family empires that the US occupation broke up.

What was the first product of Samsung's electronics business?

A black-and-white TV came first, from a group that had grown on food and textiles until it moved into electronics.

The founder's 1983 'Tokyo declaration' committed Samsung to becoming a maker of what?

DRAM memory chips were the goal, and Samsung went on to develop its own 64K DRAM chip.

Which K-pop group got its own themed version of Samsung's Galaxy S20+ phone in 2020?

BTS got the phone and matching Galaxy Buds+ in purple, a colour Samsung said reflected the band's strong connection with its global following.

Which long-time leader did Samsung briefly dethrone as the largest semiconductor company in 2017-18?

Intel had topped chip sales since 1992, a run of about 25 years, until Samsung's quarterly chip revenue passed it in 2017.

Which conglomerate spun off from Samsung in the 1990s, after the founder's death in 1987?

CJ Group began as Samsung's sugar business and went on to run CJ Entertainment, which released the film Parasite in South Korea.

Which Premier League club wore Samsung's name on its shirts until Yokohama Tyres took over in 2015?

Chelsea swapped the airline Emirates for Samsung in 2005, and Emirates went on to put its name on rivals Arsenal's shirts instead.

In which German city did Lee Kun-hee gather his executives in 1993 for his famous declaration on quality?

Frankfurt is where Lee told executives to change everything except their wives and kids, to stop Samsung churning out low-quality goods.

Samsung's textile arm invested in which American hip-hop clothing brand in 1995 after answering its New York Times ad?

FUBU used the backing to fill its orders, and co-founder Daymond John later became an investor himself on the TV show Shark Tank.

Which company, the top mobile phone maker since 1998, did Samsung overtake in 2012?

Nokia had led for about 14 years, and Samsung's best-selling Galaxy smartphones carried it past the Finnish company.

Which Japanese rival set up an LCD panel joint venture with Samsung in 2004?

Sony agreed in 2011 to sell Samsung its whole stake, after Samsung had overtaken Sony to become the world's biggest TV maker.

Which operating system did Samsung's original Galaxy S phone of 2010 run?

Android ran it, and that same year Google co-developed its own Nexus S phone with Samsung to lead a new Android release.

Which numbered model in the S series, announced in March 2013, sold more than 80 million units?

It became one of the best-selling phones of the line.

Samsung announced the original Galaxy Note, pioneer of the 'phablet', at which trade fair in 2011?

Its 5.3-inch screen was thought absurdly large at the time.

What is the stylus that shipped with every Galaxy Note called?

S Pen trouble hit the Galaxy Note 5, whose slot could jam if the pen went in backwards, so Samsung added warning labels and redesigned the slot.

Why was the Galaxy Note 7 recalled worldwide in 2016 and then discontinued?

Its batteries overheated and caught fire, and when replacement phones burned too, Samsung halted sales worldwide and ended production.

What did Samsung release in July 2017, built from parts of the recalled Galaxy Note 7?

Galaxy Note Fan Edition reversed Samsung's plan to scrap the recalled phones, a change that came after Greenpeace protesters interrupted its 2017 show in Barcelona.

In which US state did a 2012 jury order Samsung to pay Apple over $1 billion for patent infringement?

California's federal court heard the case, and after appeals whittled the award down to $539 million, the companies settled in 2018.

When Apple sued Samsung in 2011, what was Samsung to Apple?

A key parts supplier: Samsung kept making components for Apple even as the two fought in court until settling in 2018.

What delayed the launch of the Galaxy Fold in April 2019?

Review units' screens were breaking, so before the September launch Samsung tucked a removable-looking protective layer under the bezel.

Samsung's digital assistant, launched with the Galaxy S8 in 2017, is called what?

Bixby came with its own button on the S8, and after owners asked for more control, Samsung let Galaxy S10 users set that key to open other features.

Which crowdfunded startup did Samsung buy for about $300 million in 2015 to build Samsung Pay?

Its magnetic secure transmission tech let phones work at old swipe terminals.

Samsung's Linux-based operating system used on its smart TVs and early Gear watches is called what?

Tizen absorbed Samsung's earlier Bada system in 2013, but in 2021 Samsung moved its watches to Google's Wear OS, leaving Tizen mainly for TVs.

Which audio and car-tech company did Samsung buy for eight billion dollars in 2016?

The deal was Samsung's big step into connected-car technology.

In which Texas city did Samsung announce a seventeen-billion-dollar chip plant in 2021?

Taylor got the plant as Samsung set out to boost supplies of advanced logic chips during the global chip shortage.

Samsung's construction arm, Samsung C&T, led the building of which skyscraper?

Burj Khalifa was called Burj Dubai until its 2010 opening, when it was renamed after the UAE's president, who had helped bail out debt-hit Dubai.

What does Shell's floating Prelude, built by Samsung Heavy Industries, work as?

A gas plant: Prelude liquefies gas at sea and pumps it straight into tankers, so no long pipelines to a plant on land are needed.

Samsung Motors, set up with technical help from Nissan, was sold in 2000 to which carmaker?

Renault bought it after the Asian financial crisis, and in 2022 the company dropped the Samsung name to become Renault Korea Motors.

The Samsung Lions baseball team, founded in 1982, is based in which city?

Daegu fans were so angry after a 1986 Korean Series loss to the Haitai Tigers that a crowd set the Tigers' team bus on fire.

Samsung built its Gear VR headset together with which virtual-reality company?

Oculus had only sold headset kits to developers when Facebook agreed in 2014 to buy it for about $2 billion.

What is 'Over the Horizon', included on Samsung Galaxy phones since the Galaxy S II in 2011?

Its signature ringtone has been re-recorded in new styles for later Galaxy phones, including a version by musician Jacob Collier.

Everland, South Korea's largest theme park, opened in 1976 under what name?

It got the country's first wooden roller coaster, T Express, in 2008.

What is Caribbean Bay, part of the Everland resort?

The resort also has a zoo with giant pandas.

Cheil Worldwide, established in 1973, is Samsung's arm in which industry?

Advertising: Cheil began as Samsung's in-house agency and later bought American agencies such as The Barbarian Group and McKinney.

Samsung Biologics, which makes medicines for other drug companies, is based in which city?

Incheon is where Moderna turned in 2021 to have Samsung Biologics fill and package its COVID-19 vaccine.

Lee Kun-hee's 2009 pardon was meant to help him serve in which role?

Member of the International Olympic Committee: he backed Pyeongchang's bid, and it went on to host the 2018 Winter Games.

What incapacitated Lee Kun-hee in 2014, leaving his son as Samsung's de facto leader?

A heart attack in May 2014 left him unconscious in hospital for more than six years, until his death in October 2020.

What did Lee Kun-hee's heirs do in 2021 with more than 23,000 works from his art collection?

Gave them to museums: the works went to public institutions across South Korea, and the government announced plans for a museum devoted to the collection.

Lee Jae-yong was arrested in 2017 for bribery linked to a friend of which South Korean president?

Park Geun-hye was impeached over the same scandal, and in March 2017 the Constitutional Court removed her from office.

Which president pardoned Lee Jae-yong in August 2022, two months before he became Samsung chairman?

Yoon Suk Yeol had himself led the investigation team of the special prosecutor who pursued Lee in the 2016-17 bribery scandal.

Samsung chairman Lee Jae-yong earned his degree in East Asian history at which university?

Seoul National University came first, then an MBA at Tokyo's Keio University, the old rival of the Waseda that his father attended.

Samsung skipped 'Note 6' and called its 2016 phablet the Galaxy Note 7 to line up with which phone?

The Galaxy S7 had launched earlier in 2016, and Samsung did not want buyers to think the Note was a generation behind it.

To which two countries did Samsung move its mobile phone production after leaving China in 2019?

India and Vietnam took over once Samsung closed its last Chinese phone factory, after its phones had struggled to sell in China.

Which animals made headlines at Samsung's Everland theme park when a cub was born there in 2020?

Giant pandas are only loaned out by China, so Fubao had to leave Everland for China in 2024 before she turned four.

Samsung began as a worldwide Olympic partner at which 1998 Winter Games?

Nagano opened Samsung's Olympic partnership, and at the 2018 Games organisers reversed a move to leave Iran's athletes out of the free Samsung phones after Iran protested.

To which company did Samsung sell its hard disk drive business for $1.4 billion in 2011?

Seagate Technology paid partly in its own shares, so Samsung ended up owning about 9.6% of the company that bought its unit.

What is Ballie, demonstrated by Samsung at CES 2024?

It is designed to help with daily tasks, monitor pets and integrate with SmartThings-connected appliances.

Samsung's 2017 bribery case centred partly on paying for which sport's training for the daughter of the president's friend?

Equestrian training was among the payments that led to Lee Jae-yong's 2017 bribery conviction and time in prison.

In which Chinese city is the Samsung plant that made about 40% of its NAND flash in 2021?

Xi'an went into a strict COVID lockdown in December 2021, and Samsung cut chip production at the plant while it lasted.

Which company bought Samsung's printer business in 2017?

HP paid $1.05 billion, saying Samsung's multifunction printers would help it take on the market for big office copiers.