Samsung Electronics will likely release next year a Tizen smartphone with its own security solution, according to a market analystThe push for a phone running on the new operating system and using Knox, Samsung’s own security software, could increase its presence in the enterprise market. “The ultimate goal for Samsung in developing the Android-based Knox is likely to make a smartphone embedded with Knox that runs on the Tizen OS, powered by a 64-bit chip,” said Song Jong-ho, an analyst from KDB

Kakao Corp., the operator of Korea’s largest mobile messenger Kakao Talk by subscriber base, denied news reports that the firm has considered acquiring the mobile application market T Store.“Kakao has not even discussed an acquisition plan for T Store. There is little chance of the purchase happening,” said Lee Sir-goo, co-CEO of Kakao Group.Kakao officials echoed Lee’s statement. “Even though the deal sounds attractive, the news of the acquisition is groundless,” said an official from the messe

As smartphone makers scramble to adopt new identification technologies, Korean manufacturers Samsung and LG are expected to soon sign deals with Fingerprint Cards, a Swedish company that specializes in fingerprint verification systems, industry sources told The Korea Herald. The deal, if realized, would not be an acquisition, as some sources had previously suggested. “All tier-1 OEMs will have smartphones with either touch or swipe sensors during 2014 or early 2015,” CEO Johan Carlstrom of Finge

Samsung Electronics and China Mobile discussed ways to strengthen their cooperation in the mobile telecommunication sector when the Chinese firm’s chairman visited the Korean company on Friday, sources said.Shin Jong-kyun, president of Samsung Electronics’ mobile unit, met China Mobile chairman and CEO Xi Guohua at the Korean firm’s office in Suwon, south of Seoul, according to the sources.Samsung declined to confirm whether Samsung’s heir apparent Lee Jay-yong joined the Shin-Xi meeting.The sou

Samsung Card, one of the biggest credit card companies in Korea, will create a spin-off in charge of operating its customer service call centers, providing full-time job positions for its 1,300 contract-based employees currently working at the centers, according to news reports. The credit card subsidiary of Samsung Group has reportedly notified the Financial Supervisory Service of its plan to launch the Samsung Card Customer Service Co.“The company is in preparation for spinning off the custome

Samsung Group conducted its year-end reshuffle Thursday, saying that performance and competence of each figure were the focus of its decisions.The largest family-run conglomerate in Korea promoted 475 executives, of which 51 senior vice presidents were promoted to executive vice president, 93 vice presidents to senior vice president, and the rest to vice president.The latest reshuffle also includes the largest number of promotions for foreign and female officials, standing at 12 and 15, respecti

Embracing religious, cultural and regional aspects of global markets with its products, Dongbu Daewoo Electronics Corp. is making waves in the world’s home appliances market. For instance, most Iranian women wash their hijab by hand, mostly because the delicate fabric can tear in a washing machine. Also, Muslim women don’t want their head scarves to be washed together with dirty laundry. Considering these cultural factors, Dongbu Daewoo Electronics came up with the idea of adding a washing funct

More than half of the 31 CEOs of Samsung Group’s subsidiaries were found to have come from Samsung Electronics following the group’s major executive reshuffling on Monday.News reports noted that 17 of the 31 CEOs of affiliates are from the electronics arm, the group’s core subsidiary.Eight executives were promoted to president in Monday’s reshuffle. Among them, five were from Samsung Electronics: Kim Young-ky, Kim Jong-ho, Cho Nam-seong, Won Gee-chan and Lee Seon-jong.The tech firm has retained

Korea’s largest conglomerate Samsung Group is expected to conduct its year-end personnel reshuffle starting Monday, a move that is widely expected to have huge repercussions as the Samsung Electronics chairman prepares to delegate more authority to his children.Much of the scrutiny is on Seo-hyun and Boo-jin, chairman Lee Kun-hee’s two daughters, who reportedly will receive promotions in the upcoming reshuffle, industry sources said. The sources predicted that Lee’s eldest daughter Boo-jin, curr

Samsung Electronics will reportedly roll out two variants of the Galaxy S5 early next year, equipped with a 64-bit ARM chip.A premium Galaxy lineup will likely sport a 5-inch flexible OLED display and a metal chassis, while a stripped-down model will come in a plastic body, according to a news report.It is expected that the new models will run on the 64-bit Exynos chipset and a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip. The smartphones will be equipped with 3GB of RAM, a 16-megapixel camera, and a 4000mAh batter

 SK Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile carrier in Korea, plans to launch a mobile service next year that provides faster connection speeds than the existing Long Term Evolution network. Holding a press meeting at the company’s office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, Thursday, the telecommunications firm demonstrated the new network technology, which is three times faster than LTE. The mobile service, called “two-band LTE,” uses carrier aggregation technology, through which the firm aggregates

Samsung SDI said Thursday it had struck an exclusive deal to supply energy storage systems and related parts to a major Indian energy management equipment manufacturer. Under the deal, the Korean energy solution firm will supply 110 MWh energy storage systems to ACME for the next two years. The Indian firm, which specializes in energy management products for photovoltaic power generators and telecommunications equipment, is one of the largest companies in the Indian market.Samsung SDI’s lithium-

LG Electronics said Wednesday that it has named three new presidents along with other top executives. Park Jong-seok, president and CEO of LG Electronics’ mobile communications division, will be promoted to company president while maintaining his current position. Ha Hyun-hoi, executive vice president of LG Corp., was named president and CEO of LG Electronics’ home entertainment division, while Jung Do-hyun, its executive vice president and CFO, will be promoted to president. Kwon Hee-won is ste

A Korean candidate for director of a U.N. agency for telecommunications said that South Korea can play a critical role in bridging the gap between developed and less-developed nations through the world’s information and communication technology sector. “Korea is now in a position to lead the world’s ICT industry. It is not a follower anymore,” said Lee Chae-sub, a candidate for the director of the Telecommunication Standardization Sector, a division of the International Telecommunication Union (

A part-time job fair for women returning from a career hiatus and the retired elderly opened on Tuesday at an exhibition in Seoul jointly held by local conglomerates and the government.Job seekers ― mostly married women and retired seniors ― formed long lines before the main gates of the exhibition center at Coex in Gangnam. The job applicants waited their turns for job interviews and consulting, with some taking photos for applications on the sidelines. The longest line was in front of the pavi

Samsung Electronics’ top executives from around the world will gather in Korea next month to participate in meetings to discuss next year’s business strategies, company officials said on Tuesday.“The executives will look back on the achievements made in the latter half of this year and discuss business strategies (for) next year,” a Samsung official said. Around 600 executives from business units at home and abroad will attend the meetings at Samsung’s business sites in Suwon and Giheung, both i

Despite the release of flagship handsets by major smartphone makers in recent months, the Korean smartphone market posted stagnant sales for a fourth consecutive month, according to market analysts.The total shipment volume of smartphones in October stood at 1.5 million, slightly up from 1.4 million last month, but the figure shows little change from those in August and July at around 1.5 million units, market sources said Thursday. They said customers did not respond strongly to attempts to sti

General manager Shirley Yu-Tsui of IBM Korea, believes Korean firms could become more competitive in the local market as well as in the global market with the values created with the help of IBM’s cognitive computing systems. “In the new era of computing, you really need to come up with the cognitive system that really learns from itself to make some sense or extract insights out of unstructured data,” Yu-Tsui said at a recent press conference. With the insight, CEOs can make decisions, create a

LG Electronics plans to ship its flagship tablet G Pad to more markets to boost its sagging sales of the device in time for the year-end shopping season. LG’s G Pad 8.3 tablet is expected to hit 50 markets around the world including Japan, Canada and Brazil by the end of this year, according to news reports. Currently, the tablet PC is available at major retailers in 20 countries, including Best Buy in the United States, Euronics in Italy and others in France and Britain.Experts see the latest m

More companies are jumping on the bandwagon to hire contract-based part-time workers, apparently in line with the government’s policy to boost the nation’s employment.Shinsegae, operator of the nation’s biggest department store, first stepped up to the plate as it announced earlier this year that it would hire around 2,000 part-time workers for its businesses including retail store Emart and its department stores across the nation. Other retail firms including CJ Group also followed suit by hiri