Executives from Korea’s biggest tech firms told top policymakers that they were intimidated by Chinese companies’ improved home appliance technology unveiled at the latest Consumer Electronics Show.

"We were intimidated to see improved hardware technologies of Chinese firms at the event," said Lee Min, an executive at Samsung Electronics’ television business unit at a briefing attended by the ICT minister and eight tech firms on Monday.

"Although they are still behind us in terms of providing customer experience, the gap may also be narrowed when they utilize open, established platforms."

Eight tech firms attended the briefing, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, three telecom operators and Hyundai Motor.

Chinese firms are already catching up with Korean companies in the areas of smartphone, chip and display. Network equipment giant has now become the third player after Samsung and Apple in the global smartphone market. BOE is fast catching up with Samsung Display and LG Display after it invested 8 trillion won ($6.8 billion) in OLED panels. Tsinghua Unigroup has recently announced it will invest around 82 trillion won to establish chip assembly lines with an aim of taking market share from memory chip leaders Samsung and SK Hynix.

Lee told The Korea Herald after the briefing, "The hardware completion of Chines firms, such as Foxconn, Huawei and Haier, are quite close to that of Korean firms now. Although they are still behind in terms of user interface and user experience, they can catch up by utilizing established platforms, for instance, such as Alexa’s voice recognition technology."

Alexa is Amazon’s open software which enables devices to interact users through natural languages. Some Chinese firms unveiled Alexa-based products including Lenovo’s AI speaker Smart Assistant, Huawei’s smartphone Mate 9 and Ubtech Robotics’ humanoid robot Lynx at the CES.

LG Electronics’ Home Appliance & Air Solution executive Rye Hye-jeong said, "We also felt threatened to see Chinese firms. They are unveiling copycat products within three months of global firms launching new products and the technologies are still high. We need to move forward more rapidly."

At the largest consumer technology tradeshow, around 70 Korean companies participated while more than 1,300 Chinese firms attended showing off their smartphones, drones, robots, VR and self-driving solution technologies.

An industry watcher said Korean firms need to employee new strategies in order to survive the ever competitive technology industry and to compete with the growing Chinese rivals.

"In a new era where technologies are changing faster and becoming more diverse, firms need to be adept at utilizing outside sources, ideas and technologies to create new values," said Cho Chuel, a senior research fellow at the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade.

"Korea companies should ditch traditional ways of working alone and make an open ecosystem to work in partnerships with more startups or global tech firms," he added.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)