Back in my youth the South Korean company Samsung was best known for producing 2nd tier electronics items such as radios and TVs. If you had enough money to buy a “good” TV you bought an RCA, Zenith or other American name-brand set. If not, you paid considerably less for a Samsung unit and lived with a poorer quality picture and sound. And of course you knew that your brand new Samsung would eventually “tear up” long before a comparable name-brand unit would have.
But in the last couple of decades Samsung has made tremendous strides in the quality of their products. Today the massive company is a world leader in all things electronic. Whether it’s a radio, television, cell phone or computer component, if it has the Samsung name stamped on it you probably feel pretty good about your purchase.
According to DisplaySearch, a market research company that tracks the sales of television sets, one in every five TVs shipped during the third quarter of 2009 was built by Samsung. Until fairly recently Sony was the king of flat screen TVs, but Samsung has now surpassed it’s Japanese counterpart, and by a substantial margin.
In recent years we have watched our American television manufacturers lose market share on a grand scale, and it was indeed a hard thing to watch. But you have to give Samsung its due. They took full advantage of our own weaknesses (a bad American trade policy coupled with poor business decisions by domestic TV manufacturers) and today they are reaping the benefits.
Having used Samsung products, I’ll have to agree with you.