Samsung Display to pour W10tr into OLED production plant: report

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Display will reportedly beef up its production capacity for organic light-emitting diode displays at its manufacturing complex in Asan City, South Chungcheong Province, in a bid to maintain the lead in the growing market for display technology.The Nikkei, a Japanese financial newspaper, reported last week that the company will spend around 10 trillion won ($8.5 billion) in newly building production facilities for display panels and updating existing ones this year. Around

June 20, 2016

Pantech to release new smartphone

[THE INVESTOR] Smartphone-maker Pantech will release a new model on June 30, its first after being acquired by a consortium led by telecom equipment firm Solid in December last year.The firm, once the third-largest in Korea after Samsung and LG, was on the brink of bankruptcy due to decreasing sales and financial constraints in 2015.After it was acquired by the consortium, the firm has focused on rolling out connected devices for automotive, defense and home automation industries.The smartphone

June 20, 2016

NXC chairman to be questioned by prosecutors

[THE INVESTOR] Kim Jung-ju of NXC Inc., the holding firm of games maker Nexon, is to be questioned by the authorities in connection with the scandal surrounding senior prosecutor Jin Kyung-jun.According to the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office, Kim will be summoned for questioning, and his lawyers are currently working out a schedule. The prosecution said that they do not have evidence of any wrongdoing on Kim’s part and that the NXC chairman will be questioned as a witness.  Kim Jung-j

June 20, 2016

Samsung Electronics to hold global executive meeting this week

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics’ annual global strategy meeting will start on June 21, with almost 500 executives in Korea and from overseas operations flocking to its headquarters. The company’s parts, appliance and mobile business divisions will hold separate meetings presided by three CEOs -- Kwon Oh-hyun, Yoon Boo-geun and Shin Jong-kyun.  Samsung’s Suwon digital city complex in Gyeonggi Province.About 80 meeting sessions are scheduled to be held until next week. Considering previous year

June 20, 2016

IoT will drive growth of chip market: Samsung

[THE INVESTOR] A top Samsung Electronics executive said that the Internet of Things market will serve as a driving force behind the company’s semiconductor business.Participating in an investor relations conference held at Conrad Seoul on June 20, Samsung’s chief technology officer So byung-se said “IoT will become a locomotive of the semiconductor business.”“Developers should tailor system-on-chips made by other chipmakers on their own, but the ARTIK platform gets rid of such nuisance,” the CTO

June 20, 2016

Samsung to focus on building global IoT ecosystem

Samsung Electronics Co., South Korea's leading tech firm, said Monday it will accelerate a push for the establishment of a global Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem based on its ARTIK platform.One of the key words for the ecosystem is an "end-to-end (E2E)" solution to link module and cloud services to make it easier and faster for its worldwide partners to develop IoT products.ARTIK is Samsung's IoT module composed of an application processor, memory, sensor and communication module. It supports

June 20, 2016

Chip prices projected to rebound

[THE INVESTOR] Speculation has grown over the possible rally of semiconductor prices amid the industry’s efforts to control the supply and releases of new smartphones, industry sources said Monday. According to global online semiconductor market DRAMeXchange, the spot price of DDR3 began its rebound early this month. The prices of DDR3 and DDR4 have been on the decline since late 2014, with each hitting record lows last month, at $1.25 and $1.31, respectively. The fall of DRAM price has, consequ

June 20, 2016

Pantech to release new smartphone

[THE INVESTOR] Smartphone-maker Pantech will release a new model on June 30, its first after being acquired by a consortium led by telecom equipment firm Solid in December last year.The firm, once the third largest in Korea after Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, was on the brink of bankruptcy due to decreasing sales and financial constraints in 2015.After it was acquired by the consortium, the firm has focused on rolling out connected devices for automotive, defense and home automation in

June 20, 2016

Digital signage industry to create 700,000 jobs by 2020: report

[THE INVESTOR] Korea Economic Research Institute, a state-run research organization, anticipated that the digital signage market would create around 70,000 jobs by the year 2020. The digital signage is a large-size digital board, often made of organic light-emitting diode or liquid-crystal displays. The boards are used to display images, videos and textual information. The signage segment will spark 10.1-trillion-won ($8.7 billion) worth of production and create 3.2 trillion won in added value,

June 20, 2016

Nzin renamed as KakaoGames to enter US, Europe markets

[THE INVESTOR] Kakao’s gaming affiliate Nzin will change its name to KakaoGames next month aiming to improve integration of its ever-evolving business portfolio. The decision will be voted during a shareholders meeting planned on June 30.“The renaming aims to strengthen the company’s brand value as a multi-platform gaming company and elevate the sense of unity as a Kakao family,” said a Kakao official. The official said, among others, the renaming will be helpful for the company to seek business

June 20, 2016

Regulator mulls smartphone users TV license fee

[THE INVESTOR] Korea’s media regulator is planning to set up an independent organization to improve the TV license fee system of KBS, a state-run broadcaster, which will likely include a measure to charge smartphone users.The Korea Communications Commission will form an independent group dedicated to assessing the financial structure of state-run broadcaster KBS and improving the broadcasting firm’s TV license fee system, according to a briefing reported to the National Assembly on June 20.  The

June 20, 2016

Korea, Japan, China sign MOU on drone cooperation

[THE INVESTOR] Industrial organizations of South Korea, Japan and China on June 19 agreed to join hands to nurture the nascent drone industry together. The Korea Industrial Technology Association said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with its Chinese and Japanese counterparts on the sidelines of the Shenzhen International UAV (unnamed aerial vehicle) Expo. Korea Drone Industry Promotion Association chairman Lee Hyo-koo (left) and his Chinese and Japanese counterparts pose at an MOU ev

June 20, 2016

Samsung sees no serious impact from chip plant suspension in China

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Electronics downplayed any serious impact from the suspension of its chip-making plant in China that was caused by an explosion at a nearby power substation over the weekend. The Korean tech giant on June 20 said that following the explosion some production lines stopped working due to low voltage power and they are working on the resumption in the next three days.  Samsung’s first semiconductor fabrication factory in Xian, China“Up to thousands of wafers should be dispose

June 20, 2016

Kakao Pay users top 10 mln

South Korea's top mobile messenger operator Kakao Corp. said Monday its mobile payment platform Kakao Pay currently has more than 10 million users, roughly 19 months after its launch in the country.Introduced in September 2014 and similar to the world-famous PayPal, users pre-register their credit and debit cards, and make transactions simply by typing in their passwords. Kakao, which has been rolling out various services on the back of 38 million local users of the KakaoTalk mobile messenger, s

June 20, 2016

[INTERVIEW] Samsung's ever-evolving marketing innovations

[THE INVESTOR] Early this year, Samsung Electronics’ marketing team was preparing for the firm’s most important launch -- the Galaxy S7. It was a crucial juncture for the Korean tech giant. Its profits were hit hard by lukewarm sales of the phone’s predecessor, while rivals were fast gobbling up market share of the world’s largest smartphone-maker. But the team didn’t seek a safe option and decided to take risks. They launched the model in Barcelona at the industry’s first virtual reality unveil

June 20, 2016

Korean scientists develop new advanced material for lithium-ion battery

A team of South Korean researchers has developed a new type of graphene for lithium-ion batteries that can be recharged at a faster rate than conventional ones with no risk of reduced capacity, they said Monday.Conventional graphene is a two-dimensional atom-thin sheet of carbon that is commonly produced by resolving graphite in a chemical solution and then later separating the ultra-thin sheet of carbon from the solution, according to the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.Such

June 20, 2016

LG Electronics introduces 'smart sensor' for home appliances

South Korean home appliance maker LG Electronics Co. introduced a set of brand new devices Monday that are able to transform conventional household appliances into smart and connected devices which can interact with the latest mobile communication devices.They are SmartThinQ sensors and SmartThinQ Hub.The smart sensor is attached to old, plain home appliances with no connectivity, such as conventional washers, dryers and refrigerators, to enable a connection between the electronic appliances and

June 20, 2016

LG to recall air purifier filters containing toxic chemicals

[THE INVESTOR] LG Electronics said Monday that it would launch a recall campaign for air purifier filters after some products were found to contain Octylisothiazolinone (OIT), a chemical substance toxic to humans. “A small amount of OIT was found in 3M’s filters for fine particles, which were fitted in LG’s air purifiers and air conditioners produced after 2012,” the company said. LG Electronics’ air purifiers.Right after the toxic filter issue surfaced recently, LG has requested air filter make

June 20, 2016

Kakao Pay users exceed 10m mark

[THE INVESTOR] Kakao’s mobile payments service Kakao Pay has logged more than 10 million users on its home turf since its September 2014 launch, the Internet giant said on June 20. 　Running on the immensely popular KakaoTalk mobile messenger, the service has become the first financial technology or fintech service to hit the 10-million milestone in terms of users. 　Currently, there are more than 50 million KakaoTalk users around the world. 　The company attributed the service’s wider adoption amo

June 20, 2016

Samsung Display to pour W10tr into OLED production plant: report

[THE INVESTOR] Samsung Display will reportedly beef up its production capacity for organic light-emitting diode displays at its manufacturing complex in Asan City, South Chungcheong Province, in a bid to maintain the lead in the growing market for display technology.The Nikkei, a Japanese financial newspaper, reported last week that the company will spend around 10 trillion won (US$8.5 billion) in newly building production facilities for display panels and updating the existing ones this year. A

June 20, 2016