Samsung’s total worldwide marketing and advertising spend for 2013 is set to exceed the entire national GDP of a number of nations, including North Korea.
According to a Reuters report, Samsung is on-track to spend around $US14 billion on advertising and marketing worldwide during 2014.
To put that figure into perspective, according to figures published in 2011 by the UN, that puts Samsung’s advertising spend roughly on par with the $US14.026 billion GDP of Iceland.
Meanwhile, the South Korean electronics giant’s marketing budget is now larger than the entire national economies of a number of countries including North Korea ($US12.385 billion), Papua New Guinea ($12.686 billion), Albania ($US13 billion) and Armenia ($US10.1 billion).
Recent Strategy Analytics figures show that Samsung accounted for 88.4 million of the 251.4 million smartphones shipped worldwide during the third quarter of 2013, well ahead of Apple, which shipped 33.8 million.
Meanwhile, according to IHS-iSuppli figures, Samsung leads the worldwide television market with shipments of around 11 million units per quarter and a marketshare of 21%.
Again, it is well ahead of its second largest rival LG, which ships around 7.9 million units per quarter and has a 16% marketshare.
The chaebol is also a market leader in a number of other fields, ranking as the world’s second largest chipmaker after Intel, while sister company Samsung Heavy Industry is estimated to be one of the world’s largest shipbuilders in terms of gross tonnage.
Its market capitalisation currently stands at around $US227 billion.
“[Samsung will] continue to leverage our brand power to maintain growth momentum, while focusing on optimizing the efficiency of our marketing activities,” the company said in a statement.
“Our product innovation and marketing strategy have made Samsung the world’s most preferred smartphone brand. Now we’ll move from the most preferred brand to become one of the world’s leading aspirational brands,” join chief executive JK Shin recently told investors.
Andrew Sadauskas is a former journalist at SmartCompany and a former editor of TechCompany.
