Thread by @edubridge_ng

Since its introduction of the Galaxy series, @samsung has remained very popular in the Sub Saharan Africa and has leveraged the mobile market to gain traction for most of it's other products.

Today's #SWOTSunday is on the growth of Samsung and its continuous relevance.

Samsung started in 1938 as a small trading company located in Su-dong near Daegu city. It was founded by Lee Byung-chul. He had only forty employees and the company’s major business was production and distribution of groceries within the city.

In 1947, as the company began to grow Lee put up their office in Seoul. He soon started a sugar refinery which also succeeded in a very short span of time. Lee was a very ambitious person and in 1954 built the largest woolen mill in Korea located in the suburbs of Daegu city.

Soon he ventured into other sectors like insurance, retail and securities. He was a firm believer in industrialization and wanted Samsung Group to become the industry leader in almost all the sectors. In the 1960’s, the Samsung Group entered the electronics industry confidently

It was relying on the huge capital that it had for making new innovative products. Eventually, Samsung was able to release its first product which was a black and white television set.

Now, it has more than 6 divisions each focusing on individual products like the semiconductor, telecommunications, hardware, etc.

Thereafter, it acquired telecommunication’s giant Hanguk Jeonja Tongsin in 1980.

They started producing telephone, fax machines, switchboards with great success and created the base for their large-scale productions in the years to come. In the 1980’s all these production units came under one company named Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

With their founder's death they did not lose his philosophy of large-scale expansion &development. They invested millions of dollars in research for better technology for their electronics products. They started building plants in places like New York, Texas, London, Portugal

STRENGTHS
· Strong Brand Image: Samsung has a strong brand image and is trusted by millions for its products quality.

· Global Presence: Samsung has a global presence and a strong foothold in American, European and Asian markets.

Wide range of Product Portfolio: Samsung have various kinds of products. There are three main product categories that Samsung offers which are: Home Appliances, Semiconductors and Consumer Electronics.

Strong Research & Development: It has impressive research and design capabilities. It was able to create& roll out Samsung Pay, a payment app with similar capabilities to ApplePay, in less than a year. It’s loyal customers are always expectant of Samsung path-breaking new tech.

WEAKNESS
· High Diverse Portfolio: Having a product portfolio as big as Samsung might be more of a disadvantage than an advantage to an organization (jack of all trades, master of none).

· Short time customer loyalty: Samsung failed to create a brand positioning which is as clear as Apples’ and thus failed to maintain a loyal base of customers for a long period of time.

THREATS
· Emergence and Growth of Chinese players like OPPO & Vivo: Samsung which considered India as a high potential market has now started to lose its stronghold, due to the entry of new Chinese players like OPPO and Vivo.

OPPO & Vivo due to their new tech mid-segment smartphones have managed to take away a large portion of smartphone market share from Samsung. Understanding this shift, Samsung was quick to launch their new series of A6 and J6 that targeted mid-segment customers but was a bit late

· Highly Dynamic Market and changing customer loyalty– We are living in a highly dynamic and changing world and have numerous options available at our disposal for any product or service.

In today’s market, customer loyalty is changing with every new product that is getting launched in the market. People have access to try products which are technologically advanced from the old product that they are using and not bother about the brand name (Apple is an exception

This is where Samsung is lagging, with brands like Oppo and Vivo who are coming up with new technologically advanced products every other month, Samsung is a bit slow in introducing new products in the market and hence is facing a major dent in the market share.

OPPORTUNITIES
· Expanding to new Geographies: Samsung faces competition from Apple in US market and tough competition from OPPO and Vivo in Chinese and Indian markets. The biggest opportunity that Samsung currently has is to expand to unchartered geographies aggressively.

· Invest heavily in Research and Development: Technology” – is the name of the game, the trick to winning customers in the current market scenario is to provide them with technologically advanced products.

Samsung enjoys a great R&D team and just needs it to invest more in this segment and bring in more firepower in their artillery.

· Target Mid-tier or Middle-Class customer segment: It is the growing middle-class customers in the developing world who are increasing the demand for consumer electronics. This is what companies like OPPO, Vivo, and Xiaomi accomplished.

Samsung needs to come up with products for this customer segment as they are the ones who are bringing the next big wave for product demand.

Conclusion
While the number of challenges facing Samsung is abundant, this company poses a great deal of promise for the future. The company holds a strong brand of equity and loyalty, it is the opportunities that it needs to focus on how to outshine its competitors.

Sources: heartofcodes.com, successstory.com