In 2000, Samsung Electronics has been the world's largest manufacturer of semiconductor memory chips. Its main business was the production of DRAM chips, but all over the world, demand plummeted. In addition, Intel, the world's largest chip maker, has formed an alliance with Rambus, a company memory design, the development of a new super-high-speed DRAM design, which will be a new standard in the industry. Senior management at Samsung faced fundamental strategic questions: whether it should continue to invest in high-risk DRAM business alone, and can be a market leader Samsung itself? Whether it should be firm in their opposition to the alternative standard, which is an opportunity? If he took the Rambus design, as many of the resources should be directed to the production of chips Rambus? Diversification of the volatile memory business has been a key strategic issue and has one of the possible means to reduce the vulnerability of Samsung on the industry downturn, but Samsung past efforts to expand its business nonmemory met with limited success. This case provides background on the issues, Samsung faced, as it was discussed how to perform these tasks, while remaining a leading player in the semiconductor industry. "Hide
by Joel Podolny, Sea-Jin Chang Source: Stanford Graduate School of Business 26 pages. Publication Date: May 20, 2002. Prod. #: IB24A-PDF-ENG
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