Internal pricing always turns out to be problematic because the various divisions have neither the incentive nor the leverage to negotiate prices in the way that "real" customers do.
In addition to your Samsung example, I know of a major tech company whose services division often buys hardware from competitors because they get a 40% discount and priority deliveries when stock runs low. If they were to buy the in-house alternative, they'd be paying list price and be at the back of the queue for deliveries.
There's also huge scope for "funny money" Hollywood accounting-style practices, where internal prices become entirely disconnected from supply, demand, or any sort of underlying value - which actually results in the organisation being even more dominated by the whims of senior leadership than they otherwise would be.
(These problems are very similar to those experienced in country-level command economies too, of course)
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Internal pricing always turns out to be problematic because the various divisions have neither the incentive nor the leverage to negotiate prices in the way that "real" customers do.
In addition to your Samsung example, I know of a major tech company whose services division often buys hardware from competitors because they get a 40% discount and priority deliveries when stock runs low. If they were to buy the in-house alternative, they'd be paying list price and be at the back of the queue for deliveries.
There's also huge scope for "funny money" Hollywood accounting-style practices, where internal prices become entirely disconnected from supply, demand, or any sort of underlying value - which actually results in the organisation being even more dominated by the whims of senior leadership than they otherwise would be.
(These problems are very similar to those experienced in country-level command economies too, of course)
Yes the Bell System, for example, had a lot of "funny money" stuff going on with Western Electric. They called it "gold plating"