Samsung's employee count absolutely dwarfs the competition

Shawn Knight

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“Go big or go home.” It’s a phrase often used to encourage or motivate but it could also effectively describe Samsung’s business philosophy. The company’s smartphone and tablet strategy is to flood the market with all sorts of devices and see what sticks (they’ve put out roughly 46 smartphones and 27 tablets this year alone) including some absolutely massive handsets like the aptly named Galaxy Mega.

And after evaluating Samsung’s 10-K SEC filing, we now know their employee count is just as big as their marketing budget.

Ars Technica recently compared Samsung’s filing with those of some of its biggest rivals – Apple, Google, Microsoft and Sony – and discovered its employee head count dwarfs the competition.

samsung google apple microsoft employees jobs

According to the report, Samsung employs 275,133 people while the next largest company on the list (in terms of head count) is Sony’s electronics arm at 105,000 staffers. Microsoft ranked third with 99,000 employees, Apple finished fourth with 80,300 team members (more than half of which is from their retail stores) and Google was the leanest of all with just 47,756 individuals on the payroll.

Digging deeper, Ars found that Samsung had a whopping 40,506 software engineers as of 2013 which represents a 45 percent increase since 2011. Google, meanwhile, only employs 18,593 software makers which is telling when you consider how easy it is to name Google software versus Samsung software.

Considering every other company under the sun is seemingly going through a restructuring effort or otherwise slashing its workforce, Samsung seems content to do just the opposite. It’s paid off for them thus far but will the Korean tech giant be able to sustain its level of employment amid sliding share values?

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In South Korea Samsung is responsible for making a whole hell of a lot more than smartphones.
 
Samsung isn't just appliances they have their heavy industries as well they are one of the most diversified companies on the planet.
 
Some of their employees make 5 cents an hour in a "democracy". Wonder if we give them obamacare. We spend enough there on our military.
 
Google, meanwhile, only employs 18,593 software makers which is telling when you consider how easy it is to name Google software versus Samsung software.
As the Guest above me pointed out... Samsung makes far more than just phones and tablets. How many Google engineers are busy programming the functions of their latest washing machine? How many Microsoft engineers are writing code for TVs and vacuums? Or Microwaves? Or baby monitors?! (did you know Samsung makes baby monitors?) What other company makes ovens AND solid state hard drives? Of course they have far more employees! Everything has electronics in it nowadays and they all need code.

Seriously, what is the point of this story? Or is it just a coincidence that this story, which implies that Samsung needs 3 times the people to compete, is written by the same person who did the glowing review of the iPhone 6? ;)

If you need to pick on Samsung, rip on Touchwiz or their over-saturated displays.
 
As the Guest above me pointed out... Samsung makes far more than just phones and tablets.
Oh yes, and what makes it more fun is that the ( 58 or so ) divisions within the conglomerate are independent to the point where they could just as well be separate entities.
This is a simplified chart of Samsung's holdings
screen-shot-2014-06-19-at-6-50-32-pm.png
 
In South Korea Samsung is responsible for making a whole hell of a lot more than smartphones.
This is very true also of many Japanese companies. Kawasaki for example, manufactured Philadelphia's last purchase of trolley cars. (and you thought they just built motorcycles). Yamaha and Hitachi also have very diverse product lines.
 
Digging deeper, Ars found that Samsung had a whopping 40,506 software engineers as of 2013 which represents a 45 percent increase since 2011. Google, meanwhile, only employs 18,593 software makers which is telling when you consider how easy it is to name Google software versus Samsung software.
and I still wonder why these companies get sued for copyright infringement despite the presence of so many software engineers. on second thought, are these software engineers paid to copy the competition? :)
 
I have drove a samsung and hitachi digger in the past.

Smartphones are just a sideline to these companys.
 
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