Lee Jae-yong's First Global Move... Solidifying Smartphone Dominance in Latin America

Visit to Brazil Production Site "Let's Write Samsung History Together with the Pioneer Spirit"
Encouraging Smartphone and Home Appliance Businesses... New Wireless Business Head No Tae-moon Also Accompanies

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong continued his on-site management during the Lunar New Year holiday by visiting the production subsidiary in Brazil. (Photo by Samsung Electronics)

[Asia Economy Reporter Changhwan Lee] Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong visited Brazil during the Lunar New Year holiday to oversee the Latin American business.

Lee’s first global on-site visit of the new year involved inspecting smartphone and TV appliance business sites, which is interpreted as a move to strengthen the increasingly competitive smartphone and 5th generation (5G) telecommunications equipment businesses. Since 2014, Lee has personally visited overseas sites during holidays to check local markets.

According to Samsung Electronics on the 28th, Lee visited the S?o Paulo subsidiary, which oversees Latin American operations, to review local business strategies and toured the Campinas factory that produces smartphones.

The day before, he visited the Manaus subsidiary located in Amazonas state in northern Brazil and inspected the production line, marking his second consecutive day visiting local factories.

The Campinas and Manaus factories visited by Lee are key production bases supplying Samsung’s smartphones, TVs, and home appliances to the Latin American market.

These are large factories employing a total of about 7,000 employees. When Lee began actively participating in Samsung Electronics management in 2001, he first visited the Manaus factory among overseas business sites.

Samsung Electronics holds an overwhelming number one position in the Latin American smartphone and TV markets, producing most of these products at the Brazilian factories. Additionally, the company operates the S?o Paulo Brazil Research Center and the Latin America Design Center to develop products tailored to Latin American consumers.

Lee’s visit to the Brazilian subsidiary aims to further solidify Samsung Electronics’ status in the Latin American market. It is seen as a move to encourage the increasingly competitive smartphone and 5G telecommunications equipment businesses.

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics (SA), as of the third quarter last year, Samsung Electronics held a 42.3% share of the Latin American smartphone market, ranking first. Lenovo-Motorola followed with 17.5%, and Huawei with 13.6%.

Although the market share gap remains large, the pursuit by the second and third place companies is intense. Particularly, Chinese company Huawei’s market share was only 8.2% in 2016 but has grown annually. Huawei is also threatening Samsung Electronics in the 5G market.

The fact that No Tae-moon, newly appointed head of Samsung’s wireless business division, accompanied Lee supports this. No was promoted to smartphone chief in Samsung’s regular executive reshuffle on the 20th, recognized for his contributions to the development of the Galaxy series.

Meeting with local employees, Lee said, “The power to turn crises into opportunities comes from relentless challenges and innovation,” and urged, “Let’s write the 100-year history of Samsung together with the pioneering spirit of bold challenges.” He added, “The sweat shed today in this distant foreign land will be the nourishment for pioneering a new future.”

This visit to Brazil suggests that Lee’s global on-site management during holidays is becoming a regular practice. Since he effectively began overseeing Samsung Electronics management in 2014, he has almost always spent holidays at major overseas business sites. His visits are directly linked to Samsung Electronics’ future growth engines.

During the 2014 Lunar New Year holiday, he held business meetings with U.S. telecom company leaders, and in the 2016 Lunar New Year, he met Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, in the U.S. During the 2016 Chuseok holiday, he visited India and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss Samsung’s business progress in India.

Last year’s Lunar New Year, he visited Samsung Electronics’ only overseas memory semiconductor production plant in Xi’an, China, to inspect the semiconductor business. When the semiconductor market worsened last year, he visited key overseas factories to discuss business response strategies.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.