Those who are interested in the phone business will be curious about who is the founder of Samsung. Samsung is a South Korean electronics company that accounted for 70% of the group’s revenue in 2012. While it is not uncommon for a company to be started by a single person, this is rare for the company to have its roots in multiple individuals.
Lee Kun-hee
Despite his long and colorful career, Lee Kun-hee, the founder of Samsung, died at the age of 78 in South Korea on October 25. He had been hospitalized for respiratory issues and pneumonia. He was bedridden and confined to a wheelchair since his heart attack in 2014. Samsung announced his death, but it was not known for sure why. It also has not disclosed whether Lee’s son, Lee Jae-yong, will take over as chairman.
The Lee family helped drive the economic transformation of South Korea after World War Two. They also exerted influence over other Samsung companies, providing a grand strategic direction. In the 2000s, Samsung entered into a period of global conquest, acquiring businesses in LCD displays, semiconductors, flat-panel displays, televisions, and smartphones. In the early 2000s, Lee pushed the company’s technology to the next level, with flashy devices that pushed the boundaries of consumer electronics.
Samsung has been a powerhouse in South Korea for decades, and Lee’s leadership helped it take its place on the world stage. While the company is facing a sharp downturn in worldwide tech demand, its core businesses are thriving. Samsung is one of the world’s biggest producers of memory chips, smartphones, and LCD displays. It has also become the top corporate spender on research and development in the world.
Lee Kun-hee’s rise as a businessman was marked by his ability to leverage his family’s wealth to build the Samsung Group into the country’s largest conglomerate. He was the country’s richest man, and helped turn Samsung Electronics into the world’s largest tech company. In recent years, the company has become the world’s largest smartphone maker, and is the top supplier of display screens for manufacturers.
But Lee’s illustrious career was also awash in scandal. He was twice convicted of criminal offenses, including bribery and tax evasion. He also served a year in jail for his role in a scandal that implicated former president Park Geun-hye. Lee also received presidential pardons in both cases, which were widely interpreted as political gestures.
Lee was also a staunch supporter of the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. He hoped that electronics would eventually become an integral part of cars, and believed that Samsung would become a world leader in the industry. He also believed that Samsung would attract talent from overseas.
After the death of his father in 1987, Lee Kun-hee became the Samsung Group’s third-generation chairman. The company went through a period of turmoil as it struggled to cope with the global economic downturn, which reduced demand for electronic devices. He also had to fight off lung cancer in the late 1990s. The company sold off its Samsung Motors division in 2000.
As chairman, Lee Kun-hee pushed the company into the global stage, bringing Samsung to the forefront of the electronics industry. He also pushed the company’s technology up the technological ladder, and led Samsung to become the world’s largest producer of memory chips, smartphones, and LCD displays.
Infringement of six of Samsung’s patents
Among the infringed patents was an Apple patent that cited the iPhone’s “bounce-back” feature. That’s a fancy term for a method by which a device automatically returns to the user’s last used position in the case of an error, such as a power outage. Apple had argued that Samsung infringed this patent.
The jury was convinced that Samsung had infringed the patent. However, the jury did not agree that Samsung had infringed the design patent. This patent covered a rectangular front face with rounded corners and raised rim. It also covered a grid of sixteen colorful icons on a black screen.
The jury also found that Samsung had infringed two of Apple’s patents. One relates to the iPhone’s design, which had rounded corners and a grid of 16 colorful icons on a black screen. It also covered a method for transmitting an image. The jury awarded a small sum for that, but did not award any damages for the other two.
While the jury awarded a small sum for the patent citation, the jury also found that Samsung had infringed several other patents. Those patents included design, utility and functionality patents. While the jury found that Samsung infringed several of these patents, they did not find that Samsung infringed the iPhone’s design.
The jury awarded Samsung a lump sum of $15 million for the patent citation. This amount equated to the amount of profit Samsung made from selling these devices. Despite that, Samsung argued that it should not be required to pay for the total profit.
Samsung also argued that it should be liable for only a select number of patents. In the first case, Samsung claimed that the patent only covered the part of the phone that was used to perform the asserted claim. This claim was backed up by the patent’s technical specifications.
A damages expert testified that Samsung’s accused devices actually performed the asserted claim. The expert testified that Samsung receives pre-processing parameters during the operation of the method, but that these parameters were not active during that time. That’s because carriers dictate the quality of images. The expert testified that Samsung’s phones undergo alterations during the MMS process, which is done to meet carrier trans-mission and message size requirements. The expert also testified that the Samsung phones supposedly prepared an image for transmission or publication.
The jury awarded a small lump sum for the patent citation. However, the jury did not agree that the patent had anything to do with the iPhone’s “bounce-back” function. The jury also found that Samsung had infringed the “482” patent, which described a circuitry used for making an image sensor module electrically connected to a printed circuit board.
Although the jury awarded Samsung a small sum for the patent citation, it did not award any damages for the iPhone’s design. This patent covered a rectangular front face, with rounded corners and a grid of 16 colors on a black screen. It also covered the simplest patent citation.
Founder of the phablet category
Having produced the phablet, Samsung has been on the forefront of a new category of smartphones that combine the best of both the tablet and the smartphone. As the phablet category has gained popularity, other OEMs have followed suit. Huawei has released the MediaPad XI and ZTE has introduced the Grand Memo II. These devices are bigger than the typical smartphone, but not as big as the iPhone or the Galaxy Note.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note series was the first major smartphone with a screen larger than 5.0 inches. The company also teamed up with Japan’s Wacom Co. Ltd., a market leader in digital pen technology, to build a stylus into the device. However, the real star of the show was the screen. Samsung’s OLED screen technology was used to create a display that was not only larger, but was also able to support a built-in S Pen.
Samsung’s Galaxy Note series is now a staple of the company’s smartphone lineup. It started out with a 5.3-inch screen, but has since pushed the screen size up to 5.5 inches with the Note 4. The Note 3 and Note 4 also ushered in the era of the phablet with their metal frames and Quad HD Super AMOLED displays.
The Galaxy Note also introduced Samsung’s first S-Pen, which is a touch pen that allows users to draw and interact with a touchscreen. Samsung also produced a smart cover that allows users to interact with a screen when it is closed. The Note 3’s faux leather stitching was meant to add a touch of luxury.
Samsung has built a great design reputation over the years. The company’s designers are responsible for helping to envision the company’s future. They experiment with ideas and refine them in the marketplace. Samsung has also invested in organization-wide design capabilities and has created training programs for designers. One program trained in-house designers for up to two years.
In the past few years, other OEMs have jumped on the phablet bandwagon. HTC has introduced a variety of large-screen smartphones, while LG has introduced the 5.5-inch phablet. This trend will continue. In fact, the phablet may be the future of mobile devices.
While Samsung has dominated the phablet category for the past three years, this dominance has been short-lived. The company’s share of the phablet market has fallen from 90 percent to 50 percent in that time. Nonetheless, Samsung is still a phablet market leader, and is expected to sell 10 million Notes devices in the year ahead. The company is also looking to break into the budget phablet segment with the Galaxy A21.
The phablet is the newest buzz word in the mobile technology industry, but it is just one of many mobile technologies that are gaining popularity. The Galaxy Note has spawned two other successors, and the company’s latest phablet, the Galaxy Note III, is set to be unveiled in Berlin on Wednesday.