---
title: "Which came first, Microsoft or Samsung?"
description: "Microsoft vs Samsung: Samsung came first, by 37 years — 1938 against 1975. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-samsung/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Microsoft or Samsung?

**Which came first, Microsoft or Samsung?: Samsung**

1938 — 37 years before Microsoft

Samsung came first, by 37 years. Lee Byung-chul opened a trading company in Daegu, Korea.

## Side by side

|  | Microsoft | Samsung |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1975 | 1938 |
| Date | 1975-04-04 | 1938-03-01 |
| Category | company | company |
| What happened | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. | Lee Byung-chul opened a trading company in Daegu, Korea. |

## Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

## Samsung

Samsung began in 1938 as a grocery trading company dealing in dried fish, vegetables and noodles, which it exported to Manchuria. It moved into textiles, insurance and retail before making its first electronic product — a black-and-white television — in 1970. The name means "three stars".

## Common questions

### Which came first, Microsoft or Samsung?

Samsung, by 37 years — 1938 against 1975.

### When did Microsoft start?

1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

### When did Samsung start?

1938. Lee Byung-chul opened a trading company in Daegu, Korea.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]