Submitted By : Hiren Patel

Samsung Group is a South Korean multinational conglomerate company headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul. It comprises numerous subsidiaries and affiliated businesses; most of them united under the Samsung brand, and is the largest South Korean.

1970-1979 Diversifying in Industries and Electronics

In the 1970s, Samsung laid the strategic foundations for its future growth by investing in the heavy, chemical and petrochemical industries, during this time, the company also took steps to enhance its competitive position in the world's textile industry, integrating its manufacturing processes from raw materials to end products. As a result, many new companies were created, including Samsung Heavy Industries Company in 1974 and Samsung Shipbuilding and Samsung Precision Company now Samsung Techwin in 1977. Another burst of growth for Samsung came from the burgeoning home electronics business. Samsung Electronics, already a major manufacturer in the Korean market, began to export its products for the first time during this period. Samsung also acquired a 50 percent stake in Korea Semiconductor, further solidifying Samsung Electronics' position as a leader in semiconductor manufacturing.

Entering the Global Marketplace Samsung's core technology businesses diversified and expanded globally during the late 1970s and early 1980s 1980-1989 Entering the Global Marketplace Samsung's core technology businesses diversified and expanded globally during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1978, Samsung Semiconductor and Samsung Electronics became separate entities. Samsung Aerospace Industries know as Samsung Techwin was launched in February 1987 and Samsung has been developing its aerospace capabilities with unprecedented speed eversince. Samsung also entered the systems development business, establishing Samsung Data Systems in 1985 as a leader in information technology services, including systems integration, systems management, consulting and networking services. In 1987, Samsung's founding Chairman Byung-Chull Lee passed away after almost 50 years at the helm of the company. His son, Kun-Hee Lee, succeeded him as the new Chairman. During this period, Samsung challenged itself to restructure old businesses and enter new ones with the aim of becoming one of the world's top five electronics companies.

 1990-1993 Competing in a Changing Tech World The early 1990s presented tremendous challenges for high-tech businesses. Mergers, coalitions and buy-outs were common while competition and consolidation flourished. Companies were pressed to rethink their technology and services offerings. Business began to flow across borders between countries and companies. Samsung made the most of these opportunities by refocusing its business strategy to better respond to market demands. 1994-1996 Becoming a Global Force In the mid-1990s, Samsung revolutionized its business through a dedication to making world-class products, providing total customer satisfaction and being a good corporate citizen all under the vision of quality first. During this period, 17 different productsfrom semiconductors to computer monitors, TFT-LCD screens to colour picture climbed into the ranks of the top-five products for global market share in their respective areas and 12 others achieved top market ranking in their areas.

1997-1999 Advancing the Digital Frontier Despite the 1997 financial crisis that affected nearly all Korean businesses, Samsung was one of few companies that continued growing, thanks to its leadership in digital and network technologies and its steady concentration on electronics, finances and related services. Samsung responded to the crisis by reducing the number of its affiliated companies to 45 (according to the Monopoly Regulation and Fair Trade Act), decreasing personnel by almost 50,000, selling 10 business units and improving the soundness of its financial structure, lowering its 365 percent debt ratio in 1997 to 148 percent by late 1999. 2000-Present Pioneering the Digital Age The digital age has brought revolutionary change and opportunity to global business and Samsung has responded with advanced technologies, competitive products and constant innovation. At Samsung, we see every challenge as an opportunity and believe we are perfectly positioned as one of the world's recognized leaders in the digital technology industry. Commitment for being the world's best has won us the No.1 global market share for 13 of our products, including semiconductors, TFT-LCDs, monitors and CDMA mobile phones. Historic advances in research and development of our overall semiconductor line, including flash memory and nonmemory, custom semiconductors, DRAM and SRAM, as well as producing best-inclass LCDs, mobile phones, digital appliances and more.

 Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington that develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of products and services related to computing. The company was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft is the world's largest software maker measured by revenues. It is also one of the world's most valuable companies. Early history October 19, 1981, in a sea of PCs after signing a pivotal contract IBM gave Microsoft a contract to develop the OS for the new line of PCs. Paul Allen and Bill Gates, childhood friends with a passion in computer programming, were seeking to make a successful business utilizing their shared skills. The January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featured Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems Microsoft entered the OS business in 1980 with its own version of Unix, called Xenix. However, it was MS-DOS that solidified the company's dominance. After negotiations with Digital Research failed, IBM awarded a contract to Microsoft in November 1980

 19841994: Windows and Office While jointly developing a new OS with IBM in 1984, OS/2, Microsoft released Microsoft Windows, a graphical extension for MS-DOS, on November 20. Microsoft moved its headquarters to Redmond on February 26, 1986, and on March 13 the company went public. 19952005: Internet and the 32-bit era Bill Gates giving his deposition in 1998 for the United States v. Microsoft trial. Once the U.S. Department of Justice 1993 took over from the Federal Trade Commission, a protracted legal wrangling between Microsoft and the department ensued, resulting in various settlements and possible blocked mergers, Bill Gates handed over the CEO position on January 13, 2000 to Steve Ballmer, an old college friend of Gates and employee of the company since 1980, creating a new position for himself as Chief Software Architect

 20062012: Windows Vista, mobile and Windows 7 and windows 8 Microsoft came with the new innovative and high contrast calligraphic style with matched with the design of apple and being much cheaper that of apple product was a key success for Microsoft, With same intensity and innovative app developments Microsoft came up with windows8, which is the most advanced versions and many harm the other products such as tabs and mini computers with the OS being the most highlighted versions.

Apple has been one of the world's largest technology companies and in terms of revenue. It is the world's thirdlargest mobile phone maker after Samsung and Nokia Apple the most admired company in the United States in 2008, and in the world from 2008 to 2012. As of November 2012, Apple has 394 retail stores in fourteen countries as well as the online Apple Store and iTunes Store. It is the largest publicly traded corporation in the world by market capitalization, with an estimated value of US$626 billion as of September 2012. The Apple market cap is larger than that of Google and Microsoft combined. As of September 29, 2012, the company had 72,800 permanent full-time employees and 3,300 temporary full-time employees worldwide. Its worldwide annual revenue in 2010 totaled $65 billion, growing to $156 billion in 2012.

 197680 Founding and incorporation Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. The kits were hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club, Apple I was sold as a motherboard with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips. 198185 Lisa and Macintosh Steve Jobs began working on the Apple Lisa in 1978-1982, it was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting. Jobs took over Jef Raskin's low-cost-computer project the Macintosh. A race broke out between the Lisa team and the Macintosh team over which product would ship first. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI.

 198697 Decline Microsoft dominance and internal problems in apple continued to a fall in its growth this period was really hard for apple to come up. 19982005 Return to profitability In 1988 Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer Macintosh 128K iMac. The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who would later design the iPod and the iMac featured modern technology and a unique design, sold almost 800,000 units in 5 months, through this period, Apple purchased several companies to create a portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software. In 1998, Apple announced the purchase of Macromedia's Final Cut software, signaling its expansion into the digital video editing market, and Apple released two video editing products: iMovie for consumers and, for professionals, Final Cut Pro, which has gone on to be a significant video-editing program, with 800,000 registered users in early 2007

 200507: Association with Inteland other Asian firms Transition with Intel began in 2005 and with many other Asian based firms, it eventually had many of its chips and other hard ware parts from companies like high-tech computers, transcend and from Taiwan. 200711: Widespread success Apple achieved widespread success with its iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad products, which introduced innovations in mobile phones, portable music players and personal computers respectively. In addition, the implementation of a store for the purchase of software applications represented a new business model. Touch screens had been invented and seen in mobile devices before, but Apple was the first to achieve mass market adoption of such a user interface that included particular pre-programmed touch gestures. 2011Present: PostSteve Jobs era Steve was suffering from health issues and had leave from company and later died, after then apple came up with version 4 and recently apple 5s is introduced the present CEO Tim Cook is leading the apple company.

In 1911, the Tabulating Machine Company, the International Time Recording Company and the Computing Scale Company merged to form the Computing-TabulatingRecording Company. In the 1920s, CTR was responsible for such advances as the printing tabulator and the first electric key punch device.

 In 1924, CTR officially changed its name to the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). In 1933, IBM expanded its product line to include electric writing machines. IBM remained profitable during the Depression, due in part to government contracts. In 1944, IBM helped to create the Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator, later known as the Harvard Mark I. 1952 saw the development of the IBM 701, the first commercial scientific computer that IBM ever produced. In 1956, IBM introduced the IBM 305 Random Access Memory Accounting System (RAMAC), the first magnetic hard disk drive.

 In 1957, the company introduced the FORTRAN computer programming language. The System/360, developed in 1964, was a mainframe computer system that could be customized to the customer's needs. In 1981, the company introduced the IBM 5150, which came with Intel 8088 processor, a descendant of the first microprocessor ever created.

19701974: The challenges of success time of IBM. 19751992: Information revolution, rise of software and PC industries where IBM has little bit of competition with apple and Microsoft and Samsung and dell 1993present: IBM's near disaster and rebirth it has redeveloped itself with new entrants in the market, now running around 150 billion of turnover.

 Refferences
www.google.com www.wikipedia.org www.ibm.com www.apple.com www.microsoft.com www.samsung.com