[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics has been actively seeking merger and acquisition deals of start-ups in the past couple of years.
The list of its takeovers showed that the world’s largest electronics manufacturer has been focused on making a move into the software and cloud sectors and beefing up its presence in the business-to-business segment.
Samsung's Silicon Valley campus
Since 2014, the Korean tech giant acquired nine companies, including video app services developer firm SELBY in May 2014, SmartThings in Aug. 2014, printing solution firm Simpress in Jan. 2015, mobile payment firm LoopPay in Feb. 2015, and most recently cloud firm Joyent this month.
Among others, the takeover of LoopPay is well-known to the public as the US start-up’s mobile payment technology is integrated into Samsung’s mobile payment system, Samsung Pay.
SmartThings is expected to play a crucial role in the electronics firm’s initiatives to connect all home electronic devices with users.
“We work closely with start-ups to bring new software and services into Samsung, and one of the ways we do this is by driving strategic acquisitions,” said David Eun, president of Samsung’s global innovation center, in a press release after the firm completed the acquisition of Joyent.
Samsung has been on a technology shopping spree after the dawn of the smartphone era.
The number of Samsung’s takeover deals announced from 2012 to 2013 increased to nine compared to four from 2009 to 2011.
The deals from 2012 to 2013 include US cloud content service firm mSpot, solid state drive solution firm Nvelo, and Dutch lithography system company ASML.
By Kim Young-won (
wone0102@heraldcorp.com)