South Korea has set a goal to secure the most extensive free trade agreement network and to establish a risk management system to handle growing geopolitical uncertainties in a "super election" year, the Industry Ministry said Thursday while announcing the country's new trade policy roadmap. In a ministerial meeting on economic affairs, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo and other ministers reviewed the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's trade achievements of the past two years and intr

Industry Aug. 22, 2024

Korea's two top display makers Samsung Display and LG Display have won Display of the Year awards at the International Meeting on Information Display conference that kicked off on Jeju Island Wednesday. Having introduced the world’s first stretchable OLED display in 2017, Samsung unveiled another stretchable panel using the micro-LED technology that boasts the highest resolution and elongation rate among the stretchable products on the market. According to the display maker, the lates

Industry Aug. 21, 2024

While Samsung Electronics maintained its No. 1 position as a TV-maker in the first half of this year, Chinese rivals seem to be ramping up their game to close the gap. Market tracker Counterpoint Research said Monday that global TV shipments grew in the April-June period for the first time in four quarters, fueled by an Olympics spending spree. It reached 56 million units in the second quarter this year, up 3 percent on-year. Samsung took the largest share of 15 percent of total shipments, but i

Industry Aug. 19, 2024

SK hynix witnessed its sales in China and the US more than double to contribute to an overall growth in revenue in the first half of this year, according to the company’s half-year report Sunday. The world’s second-largest memory chip maker said it logged a total of 28.8 trillion won ($21.26 billion) in sales in the January-June period this year, marking a significant recovery from the 12.3 trillion won the company achieved in the same time last year. In this year's record, 55.4

Industry Aug. 18, 2024

Artificial intelligence startup Rebellions and Sapeon Korea officially signed a merger, signaling the birth of the country's first AI unicorn, SK Telecom, Sapeon Korea’s parent company, said Sunday. Rebellions, a fabless chip designer valued at 900 billion won ($664 million), and Sapeon Korea, the AI chip supplier for data centers valued at 550 billion won, have joined hands to carve out a spot in the global AI chip market that is currently dominated by US-based graphic processing uni

Industry Aug. 18, 2024

Top executives of South Korean conglomerates witnessed ups and downs in their paychecks in the first half of the year, with the semiconductors industry suffering the most drastic cuts due to lukewarm earnings, according to their half-year salary reports Wednesday. Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, the nation’s top two chipmakers, are considered among the highest-paying companies here. But their top executives suffered 20 to 30 percent cuts in their compensation amid a global downturn in ch

Industry Aug. 15, 2024

The nation's top two display-makers, Samsung Display and LG Display, unveiled Wednesday their latest cutting-edge organic light-emitting diode display technologies involving artificial intelligence and new form factors, in an apparent move to widen the gap with their Chinese runner-ups. At the K-Display Industry trade show taking place in Seoul this week, Korea Display Industry Association Chairman Choi Joo-sun underscored how Korean display-makers will keep ahead of Chinese rivals in the c

Industry Aug. 14, 2024

The latest boom in artificial intelligence is prompting competition among the world's top three memory-chip-makers to debut more power-efficient DRAM chips with higher capacity to power high-performance computing for AI applications. Chipmakers are focusing especially on the seventh-generation Low Power Double Data Rate 5X chip to be used not just in mobile devices, but also in the automotive industry. "As AI applications are diversifying, the demand for memory products consuming low p

Industry Aug. 13, 2024

Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are stepping up efforts to carve out a share of the burgeoning robot vacuum market, which has been dominated by China's Roborock, with new machines designed to remove the pain points of existing products. This week, LG Electronics is rolling out its first all-in-one robot vacuum and mop machine in 21 years, since the company introduced its first such device in 2003. Samsung Electronics has also released a robot vacuum and mop combo machine adopting adv

Industry Aug. 12, 2024

Endless guesses are made over who will win the race to the White House between former US President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris, but both look likely to bolster the country's protectionist measures to boost the US' domestic industry. Against this backdrop, South Korea's second-largest conglomerate SK Group is beefing up its US offices to elevate negotiating power in the all-important market, where it has been spending heavily to secure a firmer footing for

Industry Aug. 11, 2024

South Korean internet giant Naver on Friday reported record-high quarterly revenue of 2.6 trillion won ($1.91 billion) for the April-June period this year, thanks to profit increases in all of its major businesses including the search platform and cloud service. During an earnings call, Naver Chief Executive Officer Choi Soo-yeon said the company will enhance the user experience by launching a “search feed” feature and adopting AI tools in the second half of the year. Choi also said

Industry Aug. 9, 2024

Samsung Electronics on Wednesday denied a Reuters report that its fifth-generation HBM3E chip has passed Nvidia's qualification test for use, saying it is "still running tests with major clients." The news outlet reported earlier in the day that Samsung has cleared Nvidia’s qualification test for its HBM3E, the fifth-generation high bandwidth memory chip, creating a buzz that the world's No. 1 memory chipmaker may be starting supplying the chip to the US chip giant soon

Industry Aug. 7, 2024

Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip maker by revenue, announced Tuesday it has begun the mass production of the industry’s thinnest 12-nanometer LPDDR5X DRAM chip that helps better thermal control within mobile devices. The ultraslim DRAM chip, which comes in storage with 12- and 16-gigabytes, would create additional space within mobile devices to facilitate better airflow. This supports easier thermal control, which has become increasingly important, especially for

Industry Aug. 6, 2024

Subscription services in the home appliances market are fast expanding in South Korea, with the country’s top players targeting younger and smaller households. LG Electronics, the country's leading home appliance giant, has achieved a record sales figure surpassing the 1-trillion-won ($ 736 billion) mark for its subscription service, and Samsung Electronics is also reviewing to launch a similar service for its home appliances in the latter half of the year. For 2023, LG Electronics re

Industry Aug. 4, 2024

High bandwidth memory chips are becoming a headache for Samsung Electronics, as the world's No. 1 memory chip maker is months behind its crosstown rival SK hynix in supplying the profitable components to Nvidia, the dominant player in the burgeoning AI market. Samsung’s fourth-generation HBM3 chips have reportedly been cleared for use by Nvidia recently, but SK hynix, the No. 2 in the memory chip market, has supplied it with more advanced fifth-generation HBM3E chips since March this

Industry July 28, 2024