Korea’s three mobile carriers are set to face off in a fierce race to attract and secure customers as SK Telecom and LG Uplus resume operations next week after business suspensions for doling out excessive subsidies.KT, the No. 2 player, has been the only one operating since April 27, and has successfully attracted subscribers away from its competitors.The company saw some 194,000 customers, or around 11,000 a day, switch to its services during the 17 days since it restarted its operations.This

Line characters in Hong Kong (Naver)Local Internet giant Naver has opened a pop-up store in Hong Kong featuring products of characters from its Line mobile messenger. The company said the store is the fifth of its kind overseas after Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia. “The long lines in front of the shop to buy Line’s character products show the rising popularity of Line and its characters in Hong Kong,” a Line spokesperson said. “The popularity now matches those in Japan, Thailand and Ta

Character merchandising used to be a business belonging to traditional content producers with established retail distribution channels, such as Disney and Warner Bros.That is no longer the case, thanks in part to mobile and software technology that has allowed everyone, including mobile messaging services, to break into the character business both online and offline.KakaoTalk and Line, Korea’s two biggest mobile messaging services, are bringing their unique and funny characters from their chat s

Internet giant Google made the Asian debut of its streaming stick, Chromecast, in Korea on Tuesday.The device-to-TV casting dongle, priced at 49,900 won ($48.80), enables smartphone or tablet PC users to watch YouTube videos or movies purchased on the Google Play application platform on TV screens, the company said. Casting to the TV is currently only available on certain applications, including local streaming services Tving and Hoppin, but Google plans to expand its collaboration with other co

LG Group chairman Koo Bon-moo stressed the importance of fundamentals at work during a seminar with executives on Tuesday. His comments came at time when safety concerns, raised by the recent ferry disaster, have swept the nation. “We must pay the keenest attention to the fundamentals while doing businesses to detect any negligence in safety or quality,” the chairman told the top executives of LG’s affiliates at its headquarters in Yeouido, Seoul.  LG Group chairman Koo Bon-moo“If the company be

Samsung Group chairman Lee Kun-hee was taken off life support Monday, as the business mogul recovered from heart surgery.Samsung Medical Center said that Lee had begun breathing normally without life support.“Lee was taken off of ECMO at 8:30 a.m. as his heart function has been restored. He has been in stable condition so far since the removal,” the hospital said in a statement. ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, provides oxygen to patients whose heart or lungs have failed to work. Pe

Google said Monday that the Korean market would continue to play a critical role in the growth of its Google Play platform. “Korea is one of the most important markets, as it is in (the)top five nations with the largest number of developers for Google Play,” Jamie Rosenberg, vice president of Google’s digital content, said at its first Google Play event for partners and media in Seoul. The vice president added that the number of Koreans developing apps on Google Play had tripled during the past

Dongbu Daewoo Electronics CEO Choi Jin-kyunDongbu Daewoo Electronics, a local consumer electronics maker, said Monday that it has appointed Choi Jin-kyun, a former Samsung Electronics executive, as its new CEO. Before joining Dongbu, Choi had served as vice president of Samsung Electronics’ consumer electronics unit for three years since 2006. “We have gained a foothold in the consumer electronics market since acquiring Daewoo Electronics last February. With the new CEO, we aim to take our curre

A Samsung Electronics worker inspects a photomask engraved with chip patterns at the firm’s new chip plant in Xian, China, which started operations Friday. (Samsung Electronics)Samsung Electronics was named the third most preferred employer in the world, according to a Dutch research firm Friday. In an announcement for the Randstad Award 2014 report, which ranks the most attractive companies among job seekers, Randstad said Samsung came third among the eligible 50 firms, following German carmake

Samsung SDS, an information technology services affiliate of Samsung Group, announced Thursday that it would push for an initial public offering this year in a bid to raise more capital to finance its global expansion.The move is also likely to speed up the succession of power to Samsung heir apparent Lee Jay-yong, who holds a significant stake in the company, industry watchers said. “In order for Samsung SDS to become a global ICT services firm, we decided to file for the IPO. We will make utmo

Major Korean smartphone makers and telecommunications companies, including Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, SK Telecom and KT, are all set to show off their latest technology at the Mobile World Congress 2014.The world’s largest mobile trade show will begin on Monday (local time) in Barcelona, Spain, for a four-day run. Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest mobile manufacturer, is expected to unveil its long-awaited flagship smartphone Galaxy S5, along with wearable products including the

Samsung Electronics vice chairman Lee Jay-yong is frantically seeking support from its global partners before unveiling his firm’s Galaxy S5 smartphone at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month.The vice chairman and Larry Page, CEO of Google, met late last month to discuss their relationship, but both firms expressed discomfort with each other’s position, according to The Information, a tech news publication.This was mainly due to Google’s move to restrict its partner from tailoring i

LG Electronics unveiled its G Pro 2 on Thursday, its latest effort to gain traction in the smartphone market against rival Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Note 3. The G Pro 2 is a phablet sporting a 5.9-inch screen, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera and 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera, 3 GB DDR3 RAM and a 3,200 mAh battery. Running on the Android 4.4 KitKat operating system, LG’s latest handset is equipped with Qualcomm’s 2.26 GHz quad-core Snapdragon 800 processor, which was also utilized on the

Amid the mounting rumors about the upcoming unveiling event from Samsung Electronics later this month, fresh speculation surfaced on Tuesday that Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc. would both roll out bezel-free phones that support fingerprint scanning for their next-generation flagship models ― the Galaxy S5 and the iPhone 6. An industry source said Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy S5 would sport a display without a bezel, or the rim surrounding a screen, and allow users to scan their fingerprints a

VCNC, the operator of Between, a mobile messenger application for couples, said Monday it has successfully attracted investment from DeNA Co., a global leader in mobile Internet services. The Korean start-up said the investment is aimed at forming a business alliance to promote the mobile application and turn it into an open platform to improve its sales drive.“We are pleased to welcome DeNA as a strategic investor,” VCNC’s chief executive Park Jae-uk said in a press release. “We look forward to

Despite the enormous amounts of money it spends each year on research and development, Samsung Electronics is at a loss for “the next big thing” to follow up its Galaxy lineup, analysts said.What’s more, the buzz over Samsung phones has been dying down over the years, and the hype over what its upcoming Galaxy S5 will look like is nothing like the attention the earlier Galaxy S models received.“Samsung will face headwinds if it fails to show innovation with the Galaxy S5 despite a vast amount of

The Seoul High Court turned down Thursday an inheritance suit against Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee lodged by his elder brother Maeng-hee, upholding a lower court’s previous ruling in favor of the younger Lee. “The court judged that the plaintiff (and other siblings) implicitly agreed on (Samsung chairman) Lee’s inheritance of shares in Samsung Group affiliates including Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Electronics since they did not file any complaint about it for a long period of time,” said

Contrary to recent news reports of solar-powered smart watches, Apple has confirmed that it will stick with lithium-ion batteries for its upcoming iWatch. These batteries are to be supplied mainly by Samsung SDI, LG Chem and Tianjin Lishen Battery, according to industry sources.This means the local manufacturers would be providing products for Samsung’s largest rival. “Apple will utilize LG Chem’s stepped battery since it offers better longevity than others and can be applied for different shape

The feud between LG Electronics and environmentalists over the firm’s construction plan for its U.S. headquarters in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, is far from over as more activists are joining the opposition side. According to The New York Times, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Natural Resources Defense Council and a local conservation group said they would raise the ante in the ongoing legal battle against the Korean firm to halt the construction of its headquarters atop the