Dr.
Oh-Hyun Kwon earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National
University. He went on to earn an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from KAIST
(Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and went further to obtain
a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. There is no question about Dr. Kwon’s academic
achievements but he has gone beyond theory and parlayed the knowledge he
learned and applied them at Samsung Electronics greatly contributing to its
success as a global electronics powerhouse.
In
1985 Dr. Kwon joined
Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business. In 1992 he successfully led the
development of the industry’s first 64Mb DRAM. Dr. Kwon was appointed Vice
President of Samsung’s Memory Device Technology unit three year later. Another
promotion came in 1998 when he was appointed Senior Vice President and head of
System LSI Division’s ASIC business.
In
2000 Dr. Kwon was appointed Executive Vice President and head of LSI
Technology. He was promoted to President and General Manager of the System LSI
Division in 2004. Dr. Kwon had a high successful stint at the System LSI Division.
During his 10 years there the division gained top market shares of display
driver ICs, application processors and CMOS image sensors.
With his outstanding performance Dr. Kwon was
promoted to President of the Semiconductor Business (now Device Solutions) in
May of 2008. This was the time when the memory chip industry was struggling to
recover from one of its worst downturns. By the following year he was confident
enough to say that the semiconductor business would recover with rising demand
and limited supply.
Dr.
Kwon was promoted to Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics in December 2011 and
was appointed CEO
six months later.
His promotions have come with challenges and this was no exception
as it was also the period when Samsung Electronics was involved in a series of
disagreements with Apple over supposedly copied designs. His rise and
leadership at Samsung Electronics is also associated with the creation of the
Samsung Galaxy
phones that has established the firm as one of the global leaders in smartphones.
