Analyzing success factors of Samsung's flash memory

Abstract

Recent boom of portable electronic market has witnessed growth due to availability of successful Flash memory technology as a key product of semiconductor industry. Samsung managed not only to become a leader in DRAM market since 1992 but also rose up to the first rank in the Flash memory market by 2003. Since then, Samsung is able to maintain its top position. The objective of this paper is to analyze how Samsung succeeded in Flash memory even though Samsung was a latecomer compared to advanced companies such as Intel and Toshiba. We will analyze it from market and technological perspectives within a catch-up innovation system, for which we will look at technological leadership strategies used by Samsung to adapt organizational capability. Both technologies show similar pattern of innovation and catch-up. However after a catch-up stage, these exhibit differences in terms of technology environment, characteristic of market, and value chain up to customer. The results show, in this case Samsung``s swift response to shift competitiveness was successful for organizational capability after the catch-up period. The major contribution of this paper is, we may imply strategies for latecomer firms`` by understanding success factors and analyzing differences in organizational capability of a frontier product based firm.