SK Group, South Korea‘s second-largest conglomerate by assets, disclosed Monday actions to create social value and tools to measure how much impact it has generated through 2021 in numbers. The group with its subsidiaries contributed 18.4 trillion won ($14.5 billion) to issues such as unemployment, climate change, phone scams, blood shortages, car accidents due to drowsy driving, among others. The figure rose 60 percent from that of 2020, its estimate showed. SK had nearly 190 affiliates

Technology May 23, 2022

US President Joe Biden’s trip to Asia and his choice of South Korea as his first stop underscore Washington’s willingness to address global supply chain uncertainties largely posed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, along with efforts to counter dependence on China. This can be achieved by strengthening collaboration with technology powerhouses in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, the summit between President Yoon Suk-yeol and Biden showed. To this end, Yoon and Biden called

Technology May 22, 2022

GEUMSAN, South Chungcheong Province -- As the world shifts toward the next generation of connectivity for more immersive experiences and real-time communications, more sophisticated satellite connections will be needed, as simple single-orbit approaches are likely to struggle with the data processing in the future. KT SAT, a South Korean satellite communication services provider, was the latest to express a bid to implement a multiorbit strategy -- combining geostationary and lower-Earth orbit

Technology May 19, 2022

SK Group said Tuesday it has signed a nonbinding agreement with the US small-sized nuclear power reactor design company TerraPower to solidify the groupwide push to reduce carbon emission. But the second-largest conglomerate in South Korea did not disclose a plan for an investment in the company. Under the plan, SK Inc., SK Innovation and TerraPower will jointly develop “next-generational technologies” needed for small modular reactors which operate at a capacity of 500 megawatts

Technology May 17, 2022

Two former employees of Semes, a Samsung Electronics subsidiary and key semiconductor chip-related equipment supplier, have been indicted for their alleged involvement in technology theft. The two former Semes staffers were allegedly involved in selling crucial wafer cleaning machines -- believed to be identical to ones by Semes -- to an undisclosed Chinese entity, according to Suwon District Public Prosecutors’ Office on Tuesday. The pair and another two employees of a Semes’ suppl

Technology May 17, 2022

South Korea’s largest mobile carrier, SK Telecom, unveiled Monday an open beta version of a virtual assistant the company said is aimed at providing an “intimate” and “emotional” experience for Android mobile phone users. Named A., pronounced as “ay-dot,” the Korean-language virtual assistant takes on the appearance of a toddler in a raincoat. Powered by a natural language processing model, users will be able to initiate a conversation with the virtual

Technology May 16, 2022

While 5G penetration is still largely underway worldwide, it does not mean progress to build a faster wireless network globally has peaked. In order to offer users a full-fledged immersive experience, 6G will inevitably replace 5G networks, experts said in the first Samsung 6G Forum hosted virtually by tech giant Samsung Electronics Friday. Given that it takes about a decade to enable the next generation wireless network, and the world is seeing more applications that require massive data pro

Technology May 13, 2022

South Korea’s homegrown mobile app store operator One Store has dropped its plan to go public amid poor stock market conditions, the company said Wednesday. One Store’s decision comes a day after a book building of institutional investors wrapped up, in which the offering price of a common share was below its suggested price band, at between 34,300 won ($26.9) and 41,700 won apiece. The figures have estimated One Store’s equity value at between 910 billion won and 1.1 trilli

Technology May 11, 2022

Samsung Electronics has reclaimed the No.1 spot by monthly sales in India, buoyed by the return of its Galaxy Note successor Galaxy S22 Ultra, a phablet with built-in stylus S Pen support, data showed Tuesday. Samsung emerged as the leader in overall smartphone sales and shipments for the first time in six months in the world’s second-largest smartphone market, showed data by market intelligence Counterpoint Research. In March, Samsung accounted for 22 percent by volume market share and

Technology May 10, 2022

Samsung Electronics said Tuesday that it has developed the industry’s first 512-gigabyte Compute Express Link (CXL) DRAM module for servers that enables a higher memory capacity and lower latency suitable for artificial intelligence and cloud computing. The CXL-standard DRAM memory expander will allow a server platform in data centers and enterprise servers to add new layers of short-term memory capacity compatible with a processor chip without unnecessary costs and complexities, as oppo

Technology May 10, 2022

South Korea’s homegrown app marketplace One Store aims to challenge Google and Apple, two US tech giants that enjoy a near-monopoly in the whopping 300 trillion won ($235 billion) app store market globally, with its forthcoming stock market debut here. One Store, the nation’s sole operator of an app store of the same name, is a merged entity of the nation’s four app stores that was previously operated separately by SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus and Naver. Now it is an affiliate of

Technology May 9, 2022

 Even as it reported record revenue over the last three quarters, shares in Samsung Electronics have fallen over the past year, indicating weak market confidence in the tech giant’s prospects as inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten the general economy. Not all is well at the company, despite the strong bottom line. The memory chip business is suffering from weak pricing, and its chip foundry investments are lagging behind rivals TSMC and Intel. Meanwhile it is s

Technology May 8, 2022

South Korea’s No. 1 mobile carrier SK Telecom said Sunday it has inked a strategic alliance with German counterpart Deutsche Telekom to bring its metaverse platform to European market. SK Telecom said in a statement the two companies will carry out a field test for metaverse operation in Europe before the end of 2022, create contents that work on the virtual world and implement a marketing for metaverse migration in Europe. SK Telecom premiered an international version of its own ifland m

Technology May 8, 2022

Apple’s ecosystem of a wide array of devices including the iPhone would have remained an elusive dream had Steve Jobs failed to address the memory glitches in iPods in the early 2000s. The idea of iPhone, iPad, iTV and MacBook Air scribbled on Jobs’ whiteboard in December 2004 struck Hwang Chang-gyu, the then-president of semiconductor business at Samsung Electronics, as he was on the verge of a handshake with Jobs in California to replace iPod’s hard disk drives with flash me

Books May 5, 2022

Samsung Electronics unveiled Wednesday a long-lasting nonvolatile micro SD card for surveillance cameras that can deliver up to 16 years of continuous recording time without replacement. The product, branded as “Pro Endurance,” can last up to 33 times longer than typical speed-focused SD cards, for its largest 256-gigabyte capacity variant, according to the South Korean tech giant. The micro SD card can be used for surveillance cameras like closed circuit televisions, dashboard ca

Technology May 4, 2022