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Samsung’s 'Knight Rider'

Posted November. 16, 2016 07:11,   

Updated November. 16, 2016 07:15

한국어

Knight Rider, a U.S. series popular in the 1980s, has a super car called KITT. The highlight is the scene when Michael Knight gets into trouble and shouts, “Help me, KITT!” When Michael gives an order with a smart watch, the car shows up from out of nowhere and blocks the villains. Given that the manufacturer of KITT is “Knight Industry 2000,” the writers back then imagined that artificial intelligence will be materialized in 2000. Teenagers in the 1980s when they felt bored in weekend afternoons dreamed of a car becoming their friend in the future, watching KITT.

Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, put self-driving cars on the 12th on the list of 24 technologies that will lead the fourth industrial revolution. As Tesla adopted some self-driving technologies and Google will commercialize self-driving cars in 2020, it is not just a distant future. If smartphones changed the way people consume products and services by collecting data and assets, self-driving cars are likely to become a revolution that will change the traffic logistics system and lifestyle fundamentally.

Samsung Electronics decided to buy Harman, a U.S-based auto parts supplier, at nine trillion won (around 8 billion dollars). The acquisition of the world’s best in in-car audios and the world’s second best in mobile communications would allow Samsung to increase perfection in self-driving technologies that share road information real-time. If a future self-driving car is an engineless electric car, an auto parts supplier is more beneficial than an auto maker that makes a frame. Samsung made it clear that this acquisition is unrelated to entering the automobile market, implying that it is not interested in buying a traditional automaker.

Samsung Electronics has had 16 M&A deals under the Park Geun-hye administration. Its attempts can be seen as an effort to explore the uncharted territories such as medical equipment, mobile cloud solutions, and an artificial intelligence platform. However, excessive M&As could lead to the winner’s curse. Hopefully, Samsung’s Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong can remove uncertainty around the group and show a vision after M&As. He should be able to address concerns over the management by the third generation of large family-run companies.



홍 수 용 legman@donga.com