An employee walks into Samsung Electronics’ headquarters in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province. Yonhap News
Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) will hold its “Global Strategy Meeting” for three days starting on the 16th to map out its business strategy for the second half of the year. Crisis response in preparation for prolonged global uncertainty was initially cited as the main agenda. However, with the recent ceasefire agreement between the United States and Iran gaining rapid momentum, observers expect that a second-half sales strategy premised on the resolution of logistics and energy risks will be newly discussed.
According to the business community on the 15th, Samsung Electronics will hold its Global Strategy Meeting for the Device eXperience (DX) Division from the 16th to the 18th, and for the Device Solutions (DS) Division on the 18th. Held every June and December, the Global Strategy Meeting is a forum where key executives and overseas subsidiary heads gather under the chairmanship of division heads to share division- and region-specific issues and set business goals.
The rapidly changing Middle East situation is cited as a key variable for this meeting. On the 14th, U.S. President Donald Trump announced through social media that an agreement had been reached with Iran. A formal ceasefire signing ceremony is scheduled to take place in Switzerland on the 19th. Immediately after the signing, the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for global energy traffic, will be opened, and the naval blockade against Iran will be lifted. As the armed conflict between the two sides enters its conclusion phase after 106 days, cautious expectations are emerging that macroeconomic burdens such as high exchange rates, surging oil prices, and rising logistics costs—which have weighed on the home appliance and IT industries—will be partially resolved starting in the second half.
The DX Division, chaired by Roh Tae-moon, DX Division Head and President, will hold meetings starting with the Mobile eXperience (MX) Business Division on the 16th, followed by the Visual Display (VD) and Digital Appliances (DA) Business Divisions on the 17th, and company-wide on the 18th. The DX Division is expected to seek a breakthrough by putting artificial intelligence transition (AX) based on artificial intelligence (AI) at the forefront in this meeting.
“This strategy meeting is a forum for setting second-half sales plans, and there is a high possibility that the sales strategy will be discussed again, particularly reflecting recent macro conditions such as the Middle East ceasefire agreement,” a Samsung Electronics official said. The official explained, “It is a forum where DX Division executives gather to put their heads together amid a difficult management environment,” adding, “It will serve as an occasion to recall the importance of the AX transition that the company has been emphasizing recently, and to once again raise this company-wide important topic across all of Samsung.”
As for detailed agenda items by business division, customized response measures in line with changes in the external environment are expected to be addressed. The VD Business Division and DA Business Division, which recently welcomed President Lee Won-jin as their new head, are expected to discuss ways to enhance competitiveness centered on premium products and AI home appliances to counter the low-price offensive from Chinese home appliance companies. If the ceasefire agreement eases logistics costs and cost burdens, strategies to expand market share or second-half promotion strategies utilizing this may be placed on the table as key agenda items. The MX Business Division is expected to focus on reviewing global marketing and profitability measures for the new “Galaxy Z Fold and Flip” products slated for release in the second half.
The DS Division meeting, chaired for the first time by Jun Young-hyun, DS Division Head and Vice Chairman, since taking office, will be held on the 18th. The DS Division is observed to be reviewing a detailed roadmap for securing leadership in memory semiconductors and improving second-half performance. In particular, it is expected to examine demand prospects for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) in line with the expansion of AI infrastructure construction and primarily discuss measures to stabilize the supply chain.
While reviewing the supply status of HBM4 (6th generation) applied to Nvidia’s next-generation AI accelerator Vera Rubin, which has entered mass production, a strategy to expand market share in next-generation memory markets such as HBM4E (7th generation)—for which it shipped samples for the first time in the world—is also cited as a key agenda item. The foundry (semiconductor contract manufacturing) business division is expected to address measures to attract new customers, with the goal of turning a profit in the second half based on business performance (excluding incentives). It is expected to conduct a final review of the construction status of the Taylor plant (fab) in the United States, which will begin operations in the second half of this year.
On May 29, Samsung Electronics’ seventh-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4E) 12-layer product is shipped to a global customer for the first time in the world. Samsung Electronics