By Carl Schell, Senior Writer, September 25, 2014
“An opportunity to disrupt means an opportunity to grow,” said Tim Baxter, president of Samsung Electronics America (SEA), during his presentation at the company’s 2014 National Dealer Summit in Dallas. This simple yet telling statement was an apropos precursor to the rest of his comments, which were rife with eye-opening statistics and lofty goals.
With over 300 people from around 100 U.S. dealers in attendance, Baxter explained that not only does the company have an aggressive approach in every segment that it plays in, but it also has a track record of success in the electronics industry that few can match. Take, for instance, that Samsung is the worldwide market-share leader in six categories, including smartphones, TVs and—a surprise to most, probably—refrigerators (Baxter noted that the company has the world’s fastest-growing appliance brand); it sits in the second position for tablets. Other impressive facts about Samsung: it ships 1.5 million mobile devices every day, sells 92 TVs every minute and has filed the second most number of patents (4,676 versus IBM’s 6,809) among tech companies.