Samsung looks to metaverse, robots for future growth

South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. is eyeing the metaverse and robotics as keys to the global tech giant’s future. At the same time, it is seeking acquisitions in the artificial intelligence, 5G and automotive electronics sectors.

Samsung, the world’s top memory chipmaker, unveiled its long-term strategy on Wednesday in a general shareholders' meeting to alleviate concerns over a lack of fresh growth engines that has been weighing on its share price.

“The first step in the discovery of new businesses is to look to robotics,” Samsung’s Vice Chairman and Co-CEO Han Jong-hee said in the meeting held in Suwon, home to the company’s headquarters. “We are promoting robotics as a new business by enhancing our robot-dedicated team as we consider the sector a new opportunity area for customer contacts.”

Han also emphasized its focus on metaverse, saying “we will develop optimized metaverse devices and solutions that will help customers experience the metaverse anytime and anywhere.”

In addition, Samsung is actively considering mergers and acquisitions in various sectors such as AI, 5G and automotive electronics that can lead to growth in the future, Han said.

TO ALLAY FEARS ABOUT FUTURE GROWTH

Samsung’s share ended up 1.29% to 70,400 won ($57.1) in Seoul’s main stock exchange following the strategy comments. Analysts had pinpointed a lack of future growth engines as a reason for sluggish performance in the company’s stock. Some criticized that Samsung was negligent in preparing for the future compared to its competitors as it has not sought any significant acquisitions since 2016 when it took over Harman, a US electronics system maker, for $8 billion.

Robotics has often been mentioned as one of Samsung’s new growth sectors. Samsung is expected to begin the robotics business after one year of testing, industry sources speculated. The company established a task force for the business at the end of 2020 during its organization reshuffle and upgraded it to a team last year.

“We will take the lead in accumulating robot technologies in various areas so that future generations can experience ‘life companion’ robots,” Han said.

Samsung has been working on a launch of metaverse devices, Han already said at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 in Barcelona, Spain last month.

Regarding its business in Russia given its invasion of Ukraine, Samsung will prepare steps to minimize the impact of the crisis, Han said.

“We have suspended product shipments to Russia. We will make various contingency plans to minimize the impact on our business,” Han said.

APOLOGY FOR GOS CONTROVERSY

Meanwhile, Han apologized for the controversy over the game optimizing service (GOS) installed in the latest flagship smartphone series Galaxy S22.

“Once again, we sincerely apologize for not understanding customers’ wishes from the beginning,” Han said.

The GOS is pre-installed in Galaxy S22 models to optimize the performance of the central processing unit (CPU) and graphics processing unit (GPU) by preventing excessive heating when playing games. The function stoked complaints about weak game performances among users.

Earlier this month, Samsung said it will update the software to give customers options in using the function.

Write to Sin-Young Park at nyusos@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.