Samsung VS LG

Samsung vs. LG
By Steve Lee

             Samsung and LG have been fighting with each other for over 40 years but, this fight is unlike the one between Samsung and Apple. It is more childish.

             The most recent clash between them was over their refrigerators. LG advertised their new LG DIOS V9100 refrigerator as the world’s biggest refrigerator, with a capacity of 910 liters. Soon after, Samsung published a video titled “The Inconvenient Truth of Refrigerator Capacity”. This video showed a comparison between Samsung’s Zipel T9000 and a “third-party refrigerator”, LG’s DIOS V9100. The video starts with the ring of a bellas personnel pour water into the empty refrigerators to show how much each refrigerator can hold. The winner is, obviously, Samsung,holding 8.3 more liters. What Samsung was trying to say was that LG’s 910 liter refrigerator holds less than their 900 liter refrigerator.LG, enraged by this video, immediately accused Samsung of false advertising and requested an apology and censure of the director.

Instead of an apology, Samsung’s reply was an extended version of the video, this time with coffee cans. Experiment personnel open the refrigerators, both of which are filled with coffee cans. They start to take the coffees out, one at a time. When the “third-party refrigerator” seems to be empty, the referee comes to check and fids some more cans concealed in a small compartment nudged between the door cells. One of the personnel scratches his head as if he is embarrassed and continues to take the coffees out. The result is, however, Samsung’s victory with 67 more cans. The experiment personal does his “horse dance” from Gangnam Style as a victory dance. Round 3 is done with tuna cans, although I’m not sure if it makes any difference: after all they are both cans. It goes through the process and the result is, again, Samsung with 90 more tuna cans. The series of videos finishes with a score of 3 to 0, a complete win for Samsung. LG immediately sends anapplication requesting the banning of the commercial to the court. Samsung only replies that the LG people engaged in similar behavior with their video of butter melting on top of a Samsung phone, showing the high temperature caused by the phone. LG also released videos explaining how the Samsung videos were not reliable with three reasons. One, water leaks into unused spaces within the refrigerator. Two, the door detached from the refrigerator created non-existing spaces. Three, error can be caused by external pressure.

Like this, there have been similar clashes between them throughout the 40 years. Ever since Samsung came into the market, LG and 59 other electronics company said “If Samsung enters the narrow domestic market with limited consumers; the electronics industry will gobankrupt”. The most active protestor was LG. Samsung and LG argued for six months through their newspapers “Joong-AngIlbo” and “Gook-Jae Shin Bo”. The first clash started with the competition over their slogans. LG advertised with their slogan “The symbol of technology”, and Samsung replied with “The symbol of the state-of-the-art technology”, then with “The latest symbol of the state-of-the-art technology”. In 1985, Samsung organized a consumer movement contest on January 10 to advertise their products. LG quickly went on and scheduled their consumer movement contest on January 7, three days before Samsung’s. Silly competitions like this continued. The most funny one occurred last year when Kim Hyun Seak, Samsung executive director, said “All the LG display engineers seems to be stupid motherf**kers”.This case eventually ended with an apology from Samsung.In addition, both of them do not trust each other’s announcements of market shares: sometimesthe sum of their market shares exceeds 100%.

These are just some of the incidents that happened for the past 40 years, but it seems like the two rivalsare not completely against each other. In 1987, two companies were charged with manipulating the prices on their television sales and limiting the warranty repairs. In 2001, they were charged with jointly increasing prices of television and air conditioning during the negotiation for the Government PPS system. In 2008, they agreed to discontinue the production of the cheapest washing machine, reduce the incentives for television, and increase the factory price of their laptops, illegal actions which they had to face fines for. What can you call them but“enemies with benefits?”