LG’s upgradable home appliances to make global debut next year

LG Electronics introduced the new and improved version of its home appliance brand Tuesday to offer "hyperpersonalized" user experiences, raising connectivity and offering new subscription services to make doing household chores easier. Presenting the enhanced plan for the brand UP Appliance 2.0 to expand its business portfolio into nonhardware services and subscription services in Korea, the tech giant said it will be launching the upgraded brand overseas from next year. "UP Appl

July 25, 2023

Samsung likely to lose again to TSMC in chips revenue

Samsung Electronics, the world's largest memory chip maker, appears to be lagging behind its rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. in terms of revenue from its global semiconductor business for four quarters in a row amid a protracted slump in the global economy. According to industry sources on Sunday, TSMC’s second-quarter revenue slipped 10 percent on-year to $15.53 billion. It slightly beat market expectations, but failed to avoid the impact of a chip recession caused by

July 23, 2023

[Beyond Earth] Spacemap looks to revolutionize satellite orbit prediction

In February 2009, two communications satellites -- a commercial satellite owned by US-based global satellite company Iridium Communications and a Russian military satellite -- collided in space, marking the first-known collision between two satellites and resulting in over 10,000 pieces of space debris. Spacemap, a South Korean startup, is looking to bring about an evolution that makes space missions safer with its platform technology that can predict the orbits of satellites and space debris to

July 23, 2023

Upstage’s LLM tops global open-source AI evaluation

South Korea’s artificial intelligence startup Upstage said Thursday it has secured the top position in the global evaluation of large language models. The company’s 30-billion-parameter LLM scored 67 points, ahead of Meta’s LLaMa-2 (66.8 points) on the Open LLM Leaderboard operated by the AI platform, Hugging Face, as of Wednesday. Hugging Face’s leaderboard evaluates LLMs with less than 100 billion parameters on four key indicators: model’s reasoning challenge,

July 20, 2023

Young Koreans favor iPhones over Samsung Galaxy: survey

In South Korea, 69 percent of adult smartphone users use a Samsung device, while only 23 percent use iPhones, a Gallup survey of 1,001 adults found. But the survey reveals a starkly different trend in one demographic: younger millennials and Gen Z. Among the younger generation, aged 18 to 29, iPhone’s share rises to 65 percent, double the Samsung's 32 percent, the survey found. This represents a 13 percent increase in iPhone use from last year and stands in sharp contrast to older coh

July 20, 2023

KAIST researchers develop world’s 1st humanoid pilot

Korean researchers have developed the world’s first humanoid pilot, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology said Wednesday. According to KAIST, a group of researchers led by professor Shim Hyun-chul demonstrated a human-like robot’s successful flight simulation operation while sitting in the pilot seat of an existing airplane’s cockpit, without making any adjustments for the robot. Dubbed “Pibot,” the humanoid pilot, which combines artificial intelligence

July 19, 2023

[Photo News] Fly with BTS

South Korean budget air carrier Jeju Air on Wednesday unveiled a BTS-themed airplane as an official partner for the 2023 BTS Festa, a celebration of the K-pop group’s 10th anniversary. The airplane will fly passengers on Jeju Air’s international routes until the year-end.

July 19, 2023

LG touts expertise, reliability of Exaone 2.0

LG Group’s artificial intelligence think tank LG AI Research on Wednesday unveiled the upgraded version of its hyperscale AI multimodal Exaone that was designed to learn expertise data and use it for research and development and marketing across industry sectors. The Exaone 2.0 is the first upgrade of the AI language model that launched in December 2021. It understands both language and images simultaneously to generate image-to-text and vice versa. The latest hyper AI has learned about 45

July 19, 2023

[KH Explains] Entrapment in the 'Kakao Kingdom'

Lee Yu-jin, a 34-year-old office worker who has gone on parental leave, thought about deleting her KakaoTalk account, as she wanted to disconnect from co-workers and acquaintances during her temporary break. But she could not get away from the messaging app, as it has become a crucial conversational tool among moms in her son’s kindergarten. Since its introduction as a free mobile messenger in March 2010 under its vision to “connect everything,” KakaoTalk has quickly dominated

July 18, 2023

Racism closely tied to health inequity: US health expert

The three-year COVID-19 pandemic was not only a great disruptor, it also highlighted long-standing problems, including health inequity around the world. “I thought this was the final straw on bragging about our health care system. It showed every weakness, including huge health disparities in mortality and impact,” said Dr. Matthew H. Liang, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and professor of health policy and management at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, ta

July 18, 2023

[Beyond Earth] ‘We are part of something much more grand than we ever imagined’

Scientists know much more about the cosmos now than a few decades ago. But there are still so many uncertainties and unknowns about the universe. Sasha Sagan, daughter of the late Carl Sagan, says what the human species has found out about space so far is already satisfying, but the bigger scope of the universe is awe-inspiring. “It’s amazing. We are part of something that's so much more grand than we ever imagined,” said Sagan in a video interview with The Korea Herald on

July 18, 2023

Public affairs strategies reshaping at chaebol groups

South Korea’s top four chaebol groups are gearing up to secure supply chain resilience and salvage their global businesses from the rising geopolitical uncertainties reshaping industrial dynamics. From expanding their public affairs organizations to hiring seasoned ex-government officials, the conglomerates are coming up with measures to minimize the impacts of increasingly protectionist policies around the world, especially in the US and Europe. Their spending on lobbying activities has

July 17, 2023

[KH Explains] SK hynix, Samsung compete head-on for HBM leadership

Competition is heating up between Samsung Electronics and SK hynix to take the lead in the next-generation High Bandwidth Memory chip market, which holds great potential for growth with the rise of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Even though the market is still in its nascent stage, the world’s top two memory chip makers have already started a war of nerves, each claiming they take the majority of the market share. High Bandwidth Memory or HBM is a new type of DRAM

July 17, 2023

[Herald Interview] UK firm lures Korean trendsetters with 'transparent phones'

UK smartphone maker Nothing Technology Limited made its Korean debut last week with its second-generation flagship device, Phone 2. In a market dominated by two big names -- Samsung and Apple, the three-year-old company says it is targeting a niche but lively audience here. “We wanted to have a design identity that’s really strong and authentic to Nothing and something that could be recognized two meters away without looking at the (brand) logo because all smartphones look more the s

July 16, 2023

Hunetplus develops deposition mask for OLED displays

Hunetplus, a next-generation semiconductor and display materials company, said Thursday that it has successfully developed a deposition mask for OLED display panel fabrication using organic and inorganic hybrid materials. Conventional deposition masks used in OLED displays, also known as fine metal masks, are metallic plates that deposit light-emitting organic materials to an accurate location on a substrate during the OLED display manufacturing process. By doing so, they ensure the precise depo

July 13, 2023

LG Electronics sets sights on W100tr in sales by 2030

LG Electronics announced Wednesday its vision to transform into a "smart life solutions company" to expand customer experience, to take a leap from its core identity as a top home appliance brand. The tech giant also set the goal to achieve a global annual revenue of 100 trillion won ($77.5 billion) by 2030, and vowed to invest 50 trillion won to drive the growth. "LG will continue to pursue its bold vision to transform and leap forward as a smart life solutions company that con

July 12, 2023

Hanwha Ocean succeeds in localizing key devices of sub sonar

South Korean shipbuilder Hanwha Ocean Co. said Wednesday it has succeeded in developing three key devices of a submarine sonar system. They include a sonic depth finder, a sonar beacon and an underwater environment measuring apparatus, which could help boost the operational capability and viability of a submarine, Hanwha Ocean, formerly Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., said. A sonic depth finder, or fathometer, uses sound waves to determine the depth of water, and a sonar beacon

July 12, 2023

[From the Scene] KT to boost mining safety with digital solutions

YEONGWOL, Gangwon Province -- In a push toward digital transformation, South Korean telecommunications giant KT Corp. has launched communication-based digital solutions to help improve worker safety in mines. Jointly developed with Almonty Korea Tungsten Corp., the Korean office of a Canadian mining firm, the LTE-based communication infrastructure has been deployed at Sangdong Mine, in Yeongwol-gun, Gangwon Province. The KT-Almonty "mine safety DX" solution is composed of smart devices

July 11, 2023

[Herald Interview] Why Korea is a crucial partner for Qualcomm

US chip giant Qualcomm Technologies has made an active push to drive innovation in next-generation growth engine industries in South Korea, with big name companies such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai. It looks to continue the journey through closer partnerships with key industry players here, according to a Qualcomm executive. “Building on more than 30 years of our close collaborations, Qualcomm is committed to driving continued innovation in Korea. We are excited to continue our journey with

July 11, 2023

SK hynix becomes sole Dram supplier for Apple's Vision Pro headset

SK hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chipmaker, has been named the sole chip supplier for Apple’s Vision Pro virtual reality headset, according to industry sources Tuesday. Even though the chipmaker declined to confirm the deal, sources said the company will provide a dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, customized for the brand-new Apple gear. “We cannot provide comments related to our clients,” an SK hynix official said. The special type of DRAM chip is reporte

July 11, 2023