Samsung See-Saw Part III: The Upswing

I have been blogging on the latest developments in the Samsung saga and it is now time for an update. It seems that despite the resignation of ex-chairman Lee Kun-hee, Samsung's future has never seemed brighter. The first quarter results for Samsung's flagship company, Samsung Electronics (SE) came out yesterday.
According to today's Joongang Daily, SE recorded a 37-percent increase in profits from the same time a year ago. The reason is primarily due to heightened sales of LCD screens and, of course, cell phones.







Samsung is the industry leader in the LCD market and its profits for Q1 surpassed the 1 billion dollar mark for the very first time. For cell phones, Samsung sold 46.3 million handsets beating out Motorola for the second spot and is now second only to Nokia.
But how did it do this, especially with the financial problems affecting the world at the moment? Samsung responded by cutting down on marketing costs and used the weaker won to bounce back.



The news of Samsung's successful first quarter also breathed new life into the Kospi, Seoul's main stock market. It advanced 25.34 points, or 1.4 percent.
Okay, a lot of technical jargon there. This basically means that people are buying into Korea's tech stocks on the back of how well Samsung did in the first quarter. I guess this goes to show that in Korea, having a chairman step down as a result of illegal tax evasion accusations does not necessarily mean the end. But is this necessarily a good thing? You be the judge.