Even with Apple's recent victory over Samsung in patent infringement charges in the U.S., the back and forth legal battle will continue into the future as the companies try to establish exactly who is copying whom and in what respects. This trouble has not yet played out in China, which just recently became the world's largest smartphone market this year (Forbes Article), and perhaps in an attempt to shift its focus, Samsung has begun investing in its manufacturing operations in China to ratchet up its already dominant position in the smartphone market.
Although it is unclear whether China is either a developing or developed country, its sprawling and modernized metropolises like Shanghai and Beijing certainly stand in contrast with the western part of the country, which is much less developed than in the East. However, with Samsung's investment in a $7 billion semiconductor manufacturing factory in Xi'an, a second-tier city in the western Shaanxi province, the pace of growth is accelerating for the West (Korea Times). As if the creation of jobs and attraction of business that this investment will bring were not enough, according to an article from China.org.cn, Samsung also plans to create a partnership with the nearby universities in Xi'an to provide graduates with jobs and stimulate growth in the fields of IT and electrical engineering.
In light Stiglitz's opinions about how globalization should progress in his chapter on "Patents, Profits, and People", this example is interesting because it is evidence of a "good corporation," one that is investing in the improvement of capital and education in a developing country (of course, smartphones are not nearly as important as live-saving pharmaceuticals, but they at least promote development of China's low- to medium-skilled labor). At the same time, Samsung has been proven to be infringing on patents, so I wonder what his opinion would be concerning Samsung.
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