“Samsung Will Overtake Sony Within 3 years Through Targeting the US Market”

”Samsung has challenged Sony which occupies the US market”, the latest version (July 15) of Newsweek reported.

According to the Newsweek, Samsung set up the standard to catch up with Sony (USD 58.5 billion over the last year) by increasing the foreign sales (KRW 24.4 billion) of the last year by three times until 2005. This plan is very ambitious in a situation which most of companies have been trying to do for the survival.

Samsung schedules to invest the advertisement expenses of USD 50 million to increase the foreign sales this year in USA, and it already provided USD 15 million for the support of Salt Lake City Winter Olympic. In addition, to build a consistent corporate identity, Samsung has made efforts for the US market advance through unifying many advertising agents to Foot, Corn & Beelding of New York.

Newsweek reported that Samsung which is the world best company in a memory semiconductor, monitor and color TV caught up with SIEMENS of Germany last year. Also, it is the 3rd place in the mobile manufacturing after Nokia and Motorola.

However, this magazine said that Samsung has not acquired a brand trust from customers in US market. Many US customers prefer Sony to Samsung products even though products of Samsung have the reasonable price and good quality. Accordingly, Samsung is still in the beginning step in the US market.

Yeon-Su Shin ysshin@donga.com