Deputy General Director of Samsung Vietnam Park Sung Geun shared with The Hanoi Times his thoughts of how Samsung’s upcoming R&D center, located in the West of Hanoi, could contribute to the capital city’s digital transformation process.

Deputy General Director of Samsung Vietnam Park Sung Geun at a conference. File photo

As Hanoi is pushing for technology application in the process of building a smart city, how could Samsung’s R&D center contribute to this process?

The construction of Samsung’s new R&D center in Hanoi started on March 1, 2020, and is scheduled to complete by late 2022, or after a total of 34 months.

Right now, the building process, with a construction cost of VND1.6 trillion (US$69.5 million), had created jobs for around 180,000 seasonal workers. This would bring direct impacts on Hanoi’s economic development.

When the R&D center starts operation in early 2023, in addition to researching products such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, or internet equipment, we plan to push forward R&D in other fields that are of global trends, such as artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IoT), big data, and 5G network. These are technologies that would contribute to the process of digital transformation.

Besides, we would recruit an addition of hundreds of engineers, taking the total number of local engineers employed by Samsung to 3,000. They should be the core talents in terms of R&D in Vietnam and receive world-class training for further development.

I have no doubt that these engineers would lead the development of science and technologies of Hanoi in particular, and of Vietnam in general.

Samsung's smartphone factory in Vietnam. Source: Samsung

What steps that Samsung are making to turn Vietnam into its R&D hub?

In Samsung’s development strategy, Vietnam plays a key role not only as our global production hub but also in R&D activities. As such, other Samsung-operated facilities in Vietnam have been actively investing in R&D.

Based in Saigon Hi-tech Park (SHTP), one of Vietnam’s major tech hub, both Samsung Ho Chi Minh City Research & Development Center (SHRC) and Samsung Electronics Ho Chi Minh (SEHC) are  our main R&D facilities for software development, automation, quality assurance (QA), among others.

We expect by the end of this year, SHRC with around 500 engineers would continue to push for stronger R&D activities in various fields.

Meanwhile, Samsung SDS [ICT arm of Samsung Group] is operating Samsung SDS R&D center in Vietnam (SDSRV), which focuses on AI and data analysis that serves as a basis for making products and operation of local enterprises more competitive.

SDSRV also contributes a major part to turning Samsung’s current smart plant model into that of AI plant.

Another Samsung facility in Samsung Display Vietnam (SDV) has invested in Vietnam with a total investment capital of over US$7 billion. One of SDV’s priorities is to strengthen its linkages with universities to train highly qualified engineers on display technologies.

What is Samsung’s plan to realize its growth target in 2021?

In the first half of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a global recession. In this context, Samsung Vietnam’s exports were in decline compared to  2019. However, six months later, a rebound in demand for electronic products served as a major boost for Samsung’s revenue.

Last year, Samsung Vietnam posted an export turnover of US$57 billion, which I would say a positive result amid severe pandemic impacts.

In 2021, Samsung Vietnam would continue to strictly comply with Covid-19 countermeasures imposed by the Vietnamese government and of Samsung Group, aiming to realize the twin goals of keeping all facilities safe and maintaining a smooth operation.

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