*** Longlisted for the 2020 Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year ***'Shines an
incisive and entertaining light into the secretive world of the South Korean technology giant
shaping our digital lives in ways we probably can't imagine' -- Brad Stone Can the Asian giant
beat Apple?Based on years of reporting on Samsung for the Economist the Wall Street Journal
and Time from his base in South Korea and his countless sources inside and outside the company
Geoffrey Cain offers the first deep look behind the curtains of the biggest company nobody
knows. How has this happened? Forty years ago Samsung was a rickety Korean agricultural
conglomerate that produced sugar paper and fertilizer. But with the rise of the PC revolution
Chairman Lee Byung-chul came up with an incredibly risky multimillion dollar plan to make
Samsung a major supplier of computer chips. Lee had been wowed by a young Steve Jobs who sat
down with the chairman to offer his advice and Lee quickly became obsessed with creating a
tech empire. Today Samsung employs over 350 000 people - over four times as many as Apple -
and their revenues have grown 40 times their 1987 level. Samsung alone now make up more than
20% of South Korea's exports and sells more smartphones than any other company in the world.
And furthermore they don't just make their own phones but are one of Apple's chief supplier
on technology critical to the iPhone. Yet their disastrous recall of the Galaxy Note 7 with
numerous reports of phones spontaneously bursting into flames reveals the dangers of the
company's headlong attempt to overtake Apple at any cost. A sweeping insider account of the
Korean's company's ongoing war against the likes of Google and Apple Samsung Rising shows how
a determined and fearless Asian competitor is poised to take on the giants of the tech world.
