Top 10 Companies Owned by Samsung

Since its 1969 launch, electronics giant Samsung Group has come a long way, with the product lines it develops, the industries it enhances, and the customers it serves. In 2018, this South Korean multinational behemoth reported an astonishing $221.6 billion in revenue.

Samsung owes much of its success to its culture of strategically acquiring various other companies, focusing on appliances, medical devices, mobile communications, information technology, and other key sectors. The subsidiaries below play a major role in Samsung’s continuing growth.

Acquired by Samsung in 2016 for $8 billion, Harman International Industries engages in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of audio products and electronic systems. Its goods are marketed under brand names such as JBL, Infinity, Mark Levinson, and Harman/Kardon.

Led by the Samsung Global Innovation Center, in June 2016, Samsung bought AdGear, a leading digital advertising technology company, for approximately $50 million. A provider of software and services to multiple channels in the advertising and marketing space, AdGear offers a digital signal processor called AdGear Trader, which manages data and acts as an advertisement server.

AdGear largely focuses on enabling brands to connect with Samsung TV audiences across all digital devices.

Through its 2016 acquisition of Joyent, a global public and private provider of cloud services, Samsung now has its own platform to support cloud-based software. Prior to the deal, Joyent had acquired $131 million from private investors. Launched in 2005, Joyent’s two main products are Container as a Service (CaaS) management offering called Triton, and Node.js, an open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript run-time environment, that executes JavaScript code outside of a browser.

In a strategic move to rival Apple Inc’s Apple Pay, Samsung acquired mobile payment system LoopPay, a Massachusetts-based start-up that provides the foundation for Samsung’s mobile payment system, known as Samsung Pay.

LoopPay’s technology, which lets shoppers pay for items in-store by tapping a piece of hardware onto an electronic payment receiving system, has since been incorporated into Samsung’s mobile devices. Prior to the $250 million acquisition, LoopPay raised $10 million in venture capital financing.

In 2011, Samsung signaled its willingness to branch out into other industries when it acquired Nexus, a U.S. health care equipment maker that specializes in cardiac-testing products. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed to the public.

In 2013, Samsung paid $347 million to acquire Novaled, a German company that specializes in the research and development of organic materials and technologies for superior OLED displays. This purchase boosted next-generation displays on Samsung’s television screens and mobile devices.

In 2014, Samsung acquired California-based Proximal Data, a maker of server-side caching software that aims to optimize storage performance by efficiently storing frequently-used data. The startup raised $8 million of funding, prior to the acquisition.

For less than $100 million, Samsung purchased Simpress, a printing solutions firm, in early 2015. The motivation behind the deal was to bolster Samsung’s business-to-business operations and stabilize earnings. Based in Brazil, Simpress provides a stronger foothold for Samsung in Latin America and creates opportunities in business process outsourcing.

In the summer of 2014, Samsung paid $200 million to purchase SmartThings, a leading provider in connecting technologies.

In 2015, Samsung acquired Prismview, a Utah-based manufacturer of light-emitting diode displays, that specializes in digital billboards and message signs. Samsung utilizes the company’s liquid crystal display screens technology in its televisions, smartphones, and tablets. The dollar amount of the sale was not made public.