South Korea will host the Intellectual Property Business Congress, an annual forum for the global intellectual property industry, for the first time at JW Marriott Seoul Hotel in Seoul on Friday.Around 200 IP experts, patent agency officials and corporate executives will flock to the event, dubbed IPBC Korea, to discuss current issues and challenges facing the IP segment, such as how to develop strategies to boost the value of IP.Some of the speakers for the event include IBM’s Asia-Pacific IP l

Tech giant Samsung Electronics’ mobile security solution KNOX has received the highest score among security solutions for mobile operating systems in a series of tests, surpassing rivals including Apple.Samsung received the highest “strong,” rating in market research firm Gartner’s annual report released last week. It assesses 12 mobile security solutions across more than 20 categories including encryption management, authentication methods, and OS updates. A Galaxy S7 user initiates Samsung Ele

SK hynix, the world’s third-largest chipmaker by sales, is expected to see its operating profit more than halve during the first three months of this year, according to analyst reports Wednesday.Korean investment firms predicted that the Korean chip company’s first quarter operating profit would be in a range of 512 billion won ($446 million) to 579 billion won. SK hynix’s NAND Flash memory chip. (SK hynix)The estimates are up to 60 percent lower than the company’s operating profit in the first

Tech giant Samsung Electronics has been accelerating its push into the autonomous vehicle segment by trying to attract seasoned researchers in the field.The company posted a job opening for researchers in the autonomous driving vehicle sector on Samsung Group’s online job bulletin board Tuesday. Internet giant Google’s self-driving vehicle. (Yonhap)The job description showed that new researchers would handle tasks including computer vision, biosignal analysis, and optical film for display, which

Local tech giant LG Electronics has teamed up with state-run Korea Water Resources Corp., better known as K-water, to develop floating solar power plants.Floating solar power plants produce electricity from solar panels that are placed on the surface of ponds or reservoirs. The plants are said to be 10 percent more energy-efficient than land-based solar power plants. LG Electronics’ energy business center chief Lee Sang-bong(right) and K-water president Choi Gye-woon pose at a memorandum of unde

Kakao, the operator of South Korea’s most-used mobile messenger, is likely to see its profits nosedive in the first quarter despite its aggressive moves to expand mobile and offline businesses, analyst reports said Tuesday. However, the company’s issuance of convertible bonds worth 250 billion won ($219 million) will clear the uncertainty over its funding needs, they said.Kakao’s net profit in the first quarter is expected to have plunged 45.3 percent year-on-year to 22.1 billion won, and operat

The “big three” of the world’s virtual reality sector -- Oculus, HTC, and Sony -- will go head-to-head this year, according to market research firm Strategic Analytics.Worldwide sales of virtual reality headsets are expected to stand at $895 billion this year, of which the three VR firms will account for 77 percent. The report did not give details on the market share of each firm. The research firm, however, anticipated that the three brands will only make up 13 percent of the global shipment vo

Tech giant LG Electronics’ operating profit surged nearly 70 percent in the January-March period, according to its earnings guidance released Monday. The company said it posted 505 billion won ($441 million) in operating profit and 13. 4 trillion won in revenue, up 65.5 percent and down 4.5 percent, respectively, compared to the same period last year. LG Electronics CEO Jo Seong-jin attends a press conference in Seoul in March. (Yonhap)The operating profit beat previous market estimates in a ran

Korean software developer Tmax said Monday it would roll out a new operating system for personal computers, called TmaxOS, in a bid to increase its presence in the PC OS market, which has long been dominated by Microsoft’s Windows.Deploying a set of Unix technology standards, TmaxOS boasts a high level of software security and a better user interface than any other PC OS available on the market, according to the firm.  The headquarters of TmaxSoft in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province (TmaxSoft)“A lot o

LG OLED LURES CHINA -- LG Display, one of Korea’s leading display-makers, won a top prize for innovative technology at the China Information Technology Expo 2016, an annual electronics fair, held in Shenzhen, China, last week. (LGD)

PRESIDENT’S VISIT TO INNOVATION CENTER -- President Park Geun-hye (left) and LG Group chairman Koo Bon-moo look at products made by venture companies based at the Center for Creative Economy and Innovation in North Chungcheong Province, a start-up incubation center run by the conglomerate, on Friday. (Yonhap)

KT, NOKIA TEST COMPACT BASE STATON -- Executives and researchers from telecommunications firm KT and network equipment firm Nokia demonstrate a small cell base station based on the Long-Term Evolution-Wi-Fi aggregation technology for the first time in the world. The mobile network base station combines LTE and Wi-Fi signals to enable fast network communication in an efficient manner. (KT)

Information technology solutions developer Samsung SDS, once considered as a key Samsung Group affiliate in the inheritance process of the conglomerate’s owner family, is struggling as it is expected to see a significant drop in earnings in the first quarter of this year. Some analysts speculated the recent struggles are largely because the hype over its role in the family inheritance has fizzled.Chung Yoo-sung, chief executive of Samsung SDS. (Samsung SDS)Its share price dropped to a record low

LG HQS BRIGHTENS WITH G5 -- LG Electronics said Friday it has begun the G5 Time event, in which it turns on the lights at the firm’s head office in Seoul to depict the name of its flagship smartphone G5. The light show will run from 9 p.m. through midnight daily for the next two months. (LGE)

Korea Communications Commission chairman Choi Sung-joon said Thursday he will have discussions with top officials from the U.S. communications regulator over a proposed merger of IPTV firm SK Broadband and cable TV company CJ HelloVision this month.Chairman Choi and officials from the Korean regulator are scheduled to fly to the U.S. on Feb. 17 and meet with the Federal Communications Commission officials including chairman Tom Wheeler.Choi Sung-joong, the chairman of Korea Communications Commis

Since its launch a decade ago, Pangyo Techno Valley in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province, has grown to become the largest venture hub in South Korea. It houses more than 1,000 companies in different industrial categories -- ranging from information technology to biotechnology -- and employs about 70,000 people, generating 70 trillion won ($60 billion) in combined revenues last year. This accounts for more than 20 percent of the entire gross domestic product of the largest province in Korea.

ULTIMATE STABILITY--Professional card stacker Bryan Berg builds a 3.3-meter-tall house of cards, the tallest of its kind built in 12 hours and a new Guinness World Record, on LG Electronics’ running front-load washing machine Centum, at an event organized by the tech giant in Seoul last month.　(LGE)

Yanolija, a local motel booking company, has pulled fresh investment worth 15 billion won ($13 million) from investors from the U.K. and Korea, it said Wednesday.SL Investment Management of the U.K. and a Seoul-based investor, Partners Investment, have decided to invest in the motel booking business, which has been logging growth in recent years. The logo of motel booking service Yanolja (Yanolja)Established in 2007, the motel booking business posted 36.7 billion won in sales in 2015, up 82 perc

LG Display, one of Korea’s leading display manufacturers, said Wednesday it has signed a deal with the city government of Hai Phong, the third-largest city in Vietnam, to build a display module factory there.The Korean display firm will first spend $100 million to establish a local office in the city and begin construction of the factory later this year. It will start operating the factory next year.Jeong Cheol-dong (fourth from left), LG Display chief production officer, and Le Van Thanh (fourt

Samsung Electronics, the world’s second largest semiconductor firm, has achieved a breakthrough in the global chip sector by successfully mass-producing a 10-nanometer-class DRAM chip, the company said Tuesday. The new 8-gigabit double-data-rate-4 (DDR4) DRAM chip -- based on 1x nanometer chip design and manufacturing technology -- will place the Seoul-headquartered chipmaker in an unrivaled position, according to the firm. Sams