Yesterday, PD Notebook interviewed former Samsung lawyer Kim Young Chul. Most of what he said during the interview were repeats of his previous statements, however he did make one new allegation;
At one time, it was reported that LG beat Samsung in refrigerators. When the Chairman heard about this, he went ballistic. At that time, the semiconductor division made 2 trillion Won (about USD 2 billion) in profits. We were ordered to divert the profits to the refrigerator retail outlets. I mean you don’t just transfer 2 trillion Won just like that. But we did it.
OK, one will wonder how does transferring 2 billion USD help Samsung in gaining the lead in refrigerators? Well, if that 2 billion went to the retail outlets, as suggested by Kim, then it will in theory enable the outlets to subsidize the price of the refrigerators. Which would enable them to offer deep discounts for them and in theory raise sale figures and market share.
I don’t know how the Samsung shareholder will react to the above statement. But from the looks of it some Korean newlyweds and ajummas probably got really good deals on Samsung refrigerators.
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4 Comments
Maybe they just cooked the books to make it appear that the white goods division had a larger gross and larger profit than was really the case, in order to make it appear that they had outperformed LG. That sounds more likely than their having given away anything to consumers.
Yeah, but everyone knows Dimchae makes the best fridge in Korea.
If you have to go ballistic over something, it might as well be fridges!
Samsung (Hauzen) refrigerator icecube trays still suck and that is after 2 trillion won. Many Samsung appliances fall into the same category, as well, in terms of engineering design quality. I will never buy another air filter from them, ever again due to the poor engineering design. If one tries to clean such, they would understand my comment.