South Korean conglomerate LG’s second-in-command Vice Chairman Koo Bon-joon on Tuesday said the group will put its top priority on electric vehicle and energy businesses in the next 30 years, with an enhanced focus on business-to-business markets. Koo, the third son of honorary Chairman Koo Cha-kyoung, is currently at the forefront of leading LG’s new businesses that will drive future growth, although his older brother Chairman Koo Bon-moo is at the helm of the group. The younger brother preside

LG Group on Tuesday pledged to invest 19 trillion won ($17.4 billion) in new businesses pivoting on electric vehicle parts and next-generation displays, and hire around 10,000 new employees next year in a bilateral meeting with the country’s economy chief Kim Dong-yeon on Tuesday. It was the first one-on-one meeting between the top economy policymaker and a conglomerate leader.The meeting was held Friday at the request of Park Yong-maan, chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, wh

Samsung Electronics continues to make investments in foreign artificial intelligence technology businesses, especially focusing on Chinese firms, according to sources Monday. The South Korean tech behemoth recently invested $20 million in Vion Technologies, a Chinese AI firm specializing in machine vision, in partnership with Swiss automation company ABB, Chinese venture firm Tsing Capital and Hong Kong’s Waterwood, reported a Chinese news outlet. Vion Technologies is an AI solutions and product

Samsung Electronics on Tuesday announced that it has begun the mass production of the industry’s first 512-gigabyte embedded Universal Flash Storage solution for use in next-generation mobile devices, using the firm’s latest 64-layer 512-gigabit V-NAND chips. Consisting of eight 64-layer 512-gigabit V-NAND chips and a controller chip all stacked together, the new 512-gigabyte eUFS doubles the density of Samsung’s previous 48-layer V-NAND-based 256-gigabyte eUFS, in the same amount of space as th

SC Bank Korea, the Seoul subsidiary of London-based Standard Chartered Group, is putting asset management at the center of its retail finance business. In order to provide universal wealth management services to a wider range of consumers, the bank has secured about 30 additional specialists to the wealth management sector this year. The traditional profit structure of Korean banks is nearly 90 percent reliant on interest margins, but SC aims to break that structure by making 40 percent of its p

SK Telecom is facing a police investigation for damaging cable ducts installed by its domestic rival KT for the broadcasting system of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympics, which kicks off on Feb. 9. According to police and KT on Monday, four employees of SK Telecom and its contractor allegedly damaged three cable ducts installed underground in Daegwanryeong in PyeongChang, Gangwon Province, for use by the International Broadcasting Center, a temporary hub for broadcasters during the event. KT i

Kwon Young-soo, vice chairman and CEO of South Korean mobile carrier LG Uplus, conducted an organizational reshuffle in order to enhance the company’s competitiveness in the fields of the fifth-generation wireless network and artificial intelligence, the telecom firm said Sunday. LG Uplus, the third largest telecom firm in Korea by revenue, newly created a 5G team and reallocated its existing AI Business under the CEO office as part of an organizational shake-up for next year. In a letter sent t

The US International Trade Commission will open an inspection into South Korean chipmaker SK hynix over an alleged breach of patents owned by the US memory module firm Netlist, according to the industry Sunday. The commission’s action comes about a month after it announced it was embarking on an investigation into Samsung Electronics in October. The USITC said Friday that it held a vote on whether to examine SK hynix’s memory modules and components -- including circuit boards containing DRAM int

Investments in information and communication technologies in South Korea slightly grew in 2016 from a year earlier, but more than half of the investments were made by the country’s No. 1 conglomerate Samsung, a report found on Thursday. According to the report by the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion, investments by Korean companies in ICT rose from $21.73 billion to $22.17 billion last year. Korea ranked fourth among top 10 countries in terms of the amount of ICT i

LG Electronics on Thursday announced the launch of a new business-to-business unit and a convergence business development center as part of an organization reshuffle for 2018. To accelerate preparations for future businesses, LG established the Convergence Business Development Center with the goal of planning the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and device-to-device connectivity solutions. The new entity can be compared to Samsung Research,

Electronics manufacturers from China, Turkey and Iran are competing to acquire South Korea’s Dongbu Daewoo Electronics, along with two other Korean companies, according to industry sources Wednesday. China’s Meidi Electronics, Turkey’s Vestel and Iran’s Entekhab have submitted letters of intent to purchase a 100 percent stake in Dongbu Daewoo, as of late Tuesday, the deadline for the main bidding applications, according to the financial industry. The two Korean companies are Dayou Winia, a provi

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles dissecting the status and plans of South Korea’s leading semiconductor businesses that are shifting the shape of the global market. This is the fifth installment. -- Ed.The upcoming era of the Internet of Things is forecast to require a high level of collaboration among chipmakers, software developers and device manufacturers, according to the head of Arm Korea, a computing chip intellectual property company based in Seoul. To connect objects a

Samsung Electronics is likely to adopt liquid-crystal display panels manufactured by LG Display in its TVs that are slated for launch early next year, according to news reports and industry sources Monday. If the two South Korean tech giants reach an agreement in the ongoing negotiations, it will be the first case of Samsung using panels manufactured by a rival. According to a news report, the two sides are expected to reach an agreement in the near future, with the aim of unveiling the first “c

Samsung Electronics announced Sunday that it will start supplying Long Term Evolution smartphones and related accessories to the UK’s new emergency services network for police, fire, ambulance and other public safety users across the country.The company’s LTE smartphones won an exclusive contract from the UK’s Home Office for their water resistance and emergency functions including voice services, according to company officials.The emergency services network is to replace the current airwave sys

Jo Seong-jin, vice chairman and CEO of LG Electronics pledged to expand the company’s efforts to automate production facilities and to consequently enhance manufacturing competitiveness in the global market, according to officials Sunday.“Capabilities at the production lines will determine the fate of the competition in the fourth industrial revolution era,” Jo said Friday at a workshop that invited officials from the company’s contractors, in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province. LG Elec. Vice C

[Reshaping Semicon Map]The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles dissecting the status and plans of South Korea’s leading semiconductor businesses that are shifting the shape of the global market. This is the fourth installment. -- Ed.With increasing efforts to promote its semiconductor industry at the government level, it may be possible for China to step closer to first-tier technologies by 2035, according to a Chinese professor who is known as a “semiconductor tutor” to President Xi

Samsung SDS said Sunday that it will expand its blockchain business from industries to the public sector, marking its newly clinched deal with the Seoul Metropolitan Government. The software solution development unit of Samsung will take part in the Seoul Metropolitan Government’s project to establish an information strategy plan based on blockchain technology. The city government plans to apply blockchain technology to its administrative work across the city’s welfare, public safety and transpo

Oh Seong-mok, president of KT’s network business, says one of his most unforgettable memories is of when he was with a group of engineers from mobile chipset makers and KT officials, standing on a ski jump built for the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The group had been mired in an endless debate over what would be the best specifications for the “5G Olympics” even after 10 months of heated overnight discussions via conference calls.With no resolution in sight, they took a trip to the ski

South Korea’s mobile carrier KT on Thursday unveiled three additional devices connecting to its artificial intelligence speaker GiGA Genie as part of efforts to expand the use of the AI platform currently from the living room to all corners of a residence and even outside, with upgraded voice and dialogue capabilities. One of the devices is the GiGA Genie LTE, which combines a 10-watt Harman Kardon speaker and LTE router, running on an eight-hour battery.Adopting an LTE router, the AI speaker se

South Korea’s washing machine exporters to the US, Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, on Wednesday said they will start operations of their new plants in the US as early as possible to minimize the possible impact of a likely sanction on their products. Samsung and LG on Wednesday expressed concerns about the US International Trade Commission’s recommendation to the Donald Trump administration to impose a 50 percent tariff rate on large residential washer imports that exceeded a quota of 1.