Samsung’s next big growth engine is … robots?

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Published 12 Jun 2013

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j5

Samsung, Samsung, Samsung, that’s all anyone can talk about these days; them and Apple. But that didn’t always used to be the case. Back when I started writing about mobile phones in 2006, Samsung was this dinky little Korean company that made incredibly boring feature phones. Fast forward to today and they’re the new Nokia circa 2006, for better or worse.

I say worse because the market is incredibly fickle. Yes, Samsung makes the bulk of the components that are needed to manufacture smartphones and tablets, but their consumer facing brand could easily stop becoming relevant if they start making mistakes. Apple, for the longest time, was the computer company. Then at the turn of the century they became the computer and MP3 player company. Now, they’re the computer, MP3 player, smartphone, and tablet company. In other words, they expanded their business by diversifying.

According to the Korean website ETNews, Samsung’s now investing heavily in robotics. Specifically the robots that can be used in the services industry. The part of Samsung that was responsible for the company’s success in mobile phones is going to be in charge of this new division. Here’s the quote that stands out:

“Samsung Electronics aims to foster its fledgling robotic business into Samsung’s next-generation growth engine that will succeed smartphones in three years by grafting healthcare, education and entertainment onto service robots.”

Yes, you read that right, Samsung expects robots to be bigger than smartphones in just three years. To put that number into terms you can understand, that means Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7.