By Andrew Salmon
Asia Times
Mar 20, 2020
A long-awaited American book lifts the lid on the Korean corporate dynasty. It is unlikely to be impressed
Biographies are prominent sights on non-fiction shelves, and many become classics. Business bios? Less so. But a new entry to the genre – Geoffrey Cain’s Samsung Rising: The Inside Story of the South Korean Giant that Set out to Beat Apple and Conquer Tech (Penguin Random House, 2020) – is a corker.
This is war
Cain covers Samsung’s bypassing of Sony in short order. The Japanese giant, it appears, was more victim of its own errors than Samsung’s devious brilliance. More central is the Apple-Samsung war. (Perhaps to lure US readers, perhaps to forestall Samsung lawyers, the dust jacket features the Apple, not Samsung logo.)
The opponents are a study in contrasts – Apple is the innovative leader with a narrow, specialized product portfolio, while Samsung is the uber-efficient fast follower with the miles-wide portfolio.
Relations began amicably. A youthful Steve Jobs visited a gritty Samsung in 1983 with plans for a tablet computer. His brilliance was recognized by BC, but Apple booted Jobs before a partnership could form. Samsung subsequently supplied Apple with chips, but a legal war was declared in 2011 when the US firm accused the Korean of copying its smartphone technology.
Cain dives deeper into marketing than technological or legal strategies, explaining how Samsung hired Nike veteran Todd Pendleton to muscle-up its brand. Pendleton released his edgy anti-Apple “Next Big Thing” ad before Seoul approved it. Head office hated it, but it landed squarely in Apple’s groin. Before long, Samsung phones were outselling Apple’s.
Still, Samsung – a hardcore hardware firm – never rivaled Apple in software. It declined to buy Android two weeks before Google acquired it, its in-house OS went nowhere and Samsung’s failed thrust into software irked Google.
A celebrity endorsement from Ellen De Generes on Oscars night soared, but attempts to create dedicated user communities in partnerships with US entertainment giants foundered due to resistance from engineering-centric head office chiefs and dodgy execution.
Samsung’s third-generation leading Lee, Jae-yong (“Jay”) comes across as pleasant and more easy-going than his predecessors. He sensibly sells off non-core assets and tries to dampen hierarchies. But he is also painted as somewhat dim-witted, lacking the charisma and vision of Dad and Grandpa. The exploding Galaxies debacle unfolds on his watch.
The story of his ascent to de facto leadership – de jure, the comatose KH retains the chairmanship – typically involved a shadowy inheritance play/bribery scam. As usual, minority shareholders took hits, infuriating activist fund Elliot Management. Despite the support of Korea’s spy agency and pension fund, Samsung was found out.
That contributed to a snowballing scandal that sparked the downfall of hapless President Park Geun-hye, impeached in 2017. Today, she rots in jail on a combined 33-year rap, while Samsung lawyers sprung Jay, convicted of corruption and bribery, within a year.
Verdict
Cain cooks up a fast-moving feast.
Even this writer, who has covered Korea for more than a dozen years, is awed by his sources (albeit, Cain has an irritating habit of telling the reader what he ate and drank with them). The author meets a battery-explosion investigator, retired Samsung executives and aides, distant relatives and foreign veterans of the company. All tell tales, granting the book a rich vein of anecdotes.
BC was infuriated to see a North Korean invader commandeer his Chevvy in 1950. In 1983, Samsung executives undertook a day-night hike in snowy mountains to toughen them up before inaugurating the first semiconductor fab. Cain even reveals why Samsung’s flagship smartphone was dubbed “Galaxy.” (It was named for an American wine quaffed by Samsung execs.)
With all this detail, the reader is in danger of losing sight of the wood for the trees, but overall, Cain paints a picture of a company you might like to buy from, but would never work for. No Samsung staffers will be seen dead with this book, but rest assured, they will devour it behind locked doors.
Criticisms? Samsung endures, but Samsung Rising ends with a quote-heavy epilog and a cliffhanger related to the never-ending legal woes facing Jay. Readers may find themselves calling out for a more ambitious “Quo vadis, Samsung?” analysis.
Another issue is timing. Samsung Rising has been long in gestation – Cain granted Asia Times an interview on the book in 2017 – and Apple vs Samsung is old hat. Cain does not address the central issue in tech today – the Trumpian decoupling underway as rift widens to chasm between China and the US.
Where Samsung – and Korea, for that matter – fit into this clash of the titans is ignored; Chinese contender Huawei merits but a single line in the book.
Yet, Cain provides essential reading for the 21st century, for his subject is a central player in the sector that is transforming our world. Populated by a cast of alpha+ characters, alive with incident and weighty with import, Samsung Rising is a masterclass in business bio-writing – one that reads like a cyberpunk thriller crackling with circuitry, lit by neon and fueled by soju.
Read more about Geoffrey Cain’s new book, Samsung Rising at Asia Times