March 13, 2017

LG Electronics Inc. said Monday that its portable projector maintained the No. 1 spot in global markets for electro-luminescent display projectors last year.

Citing recent data by market tracker Pacific Media Associates, LG said its “Minibeam TV” projector was named as the world’s top-selling LED projector in terms of revenues in 2016.

This photo shows LG Electronics Inc.’s ‘Minibeam TV’ projectors. (Yonhap file photo)

It marked the sixth consecutive year that the LG projector stood at the top spot.

In a previous statement, LG said the projector offers greater portability compared to conventional projectors.

Its wireless connectivity allows easy content mirroring to a smartphone, tablet or laptop computer, LG said.

The “Minibeam TV” projector was “a best seller among customers who wanted the big-screen experience but have limited space,” LG said. (Yonhap)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Technology

South Korea’s average daily exports will likely exceed $2 billion this month buttressed by growing shipments of semiconductors, petroleum and petrochemical products, government officials said Monday.

Exports of petroleum and petrochemical goods reached $6.7 billion and those for semiconductors $6.4 billion in February. The figures represent a 72.3 percent and 54.2 percent surge, respectively, from a year earlier.

(Yonhap)

“We expect export growth will continue for the time being as both advanced and emerging economies are improving on the whole,” an official from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance said.

Daily exports rose $1.96 billion in February, up from $1.89 billion in November and $1.84 billion in December, according to the data compiled by the ministry.

The country last achieved the $2 billion mark in daily shipments in September 2015 with $2.01 billion.

Daily exports fell to the lowest level in years to hit $1.61 billion in January last year affected by nosediving oil prices.

South Korea’s exports declined 5.9 percent to $495.5 billion last year from a year earlier, the eighth biggest in the world.

South Korea was the sixth largest exporter the previous year. (Yonhap)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Economy

Leading automaker Hyundai Motor Co., top cosmetics maker AmorePacific Corp. and other major companies will hold their respective shareholder meetings this week, industry sources said Sunday.

Hyundai Motor will hold a shareholder gathering Friday, where a proposal to pick Chung Mong-koo, chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, as a board member will be put to a vote.

One of the key issues at the meeting is whether the National Pension Service, the country’s largest institutional investor, will vote for the proposal or not.

LG Electronics Inc., a major home appliance maker, is also scheduled to hold its shareholder meeting Friday, and Naver, the operator of the country’s top Internet portal, will do the same on the day, the sources said.

So far, 47 listed firms, including top steelmaker POSCO, have held shareholder meetings. This week, a total of 211 publicly traded firms are set to hold such meetings, the sources said.

Samsung Electronics Co., the country’s top market cap, and its key affiliates, such as Samsung C&T Corp. and Samsung Life Insurance Co., are scheduled to hold shareholder meetings on March 24.

Industry sources said current chiefs of the tech behemoth and its major affiliates are likely to keep their positions.

Samsung earlier announced that a personnel reshuffle of top executives would be conducted by each affiliate’s board of directors, and its affiliates will independently make their own business decisions throughout their board meetings, as part of its broader efforts to revamp the group’s management. (Yonhap)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Companies

Top Korean cosmetics companies are preparing for a beauty expo coming to Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province in September.

According to North Chungcheong Province, 81 companies have registered to participate in the Cosmetics & Beauty Expo, Osong Korea 2017, which will take place from Sept. 12-16 at Osong Station. This is the expo’s fourth year.

Buyers receive information about cosmetics at the Cosmetics & Beauty Expo, Osong Korea 2016 (North Chungcheong Province)

Major participants include The Saem and manufacturer Cosmecca Korea as well as foreign companies such as German firm Manufaktur B.W. Nobis. Companies from the Chungcheong area, such as Pion-tech, HP&C, and Beauty Collagen, have also registered to come to the expo.

The expo will mainly feature three areas: the business-to-business sector, the business-to-consumer sector and the export sector. It will allow companies to showcase their products, receive one-on-one exporting consultations and take part in conferences that will share ideas from industry leaders about the changing Korean cosmetics landscape.

Cosmetics makers will also have opportunities to meet buyers. To ease the cosmetics industry’s heavy dependence on certain countries such as China, the expo will be inviting buyers from Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. It will also host more than 2,500 sessions to provide information on export strategies.

On the domestic front, smaller cosmetics makers will have a chance to meet with merchandisers from retailers including home-shopping networks, shopping malls and department stores.

“Despite having six months left to the expo, we are already seeing high interest and inquiries from leading K-beauty firms. We expect the number of participants to continue to grow,” said Ko Geun-seok, the head of North Chungcheong Province’s biotech policy division.

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Industry

Chinese electronics company TCL Corp. is reportedly reviewing plans to launch the BlackBerry KeyOne in South Korea via local carrier SK Telecom within this year.

The information was made public by Nicolas Zibell, the chief executive of TCL Communication Technology Holdings, a subsidiary of TCL Corp., who spoke to the local media in Seoul last week.

The BlackBerry KeyOne presented at the MWC 2017 in Barcelona (Reuters-Yonhap)

“There are around 100,000 BlackBerry users in Korea. We’re currently conducting a market study and positively reviewing the launch of the BlackBerry KeyOne here,” Zibell said in an interview with Yonhap News Agency.

According to the TCL Communication executive, the Chinese smartphone maker is working exclusively with SKT, Korea’s biggest mobile carrier, to bring the new BlackBerry phone to Korea.

TCL plans to start selling the BlackBerry KeyOne in markets in North America and Western Europe from April, Zibell said. However, the company will not be launching the mobile device simultaneously in global markets, he added.

The BlackBerry KeyOne, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, sports a 4.5-inch (11.4-centimeter) liquid-crystal display screen and a physical keyboard attached below the screen. It runs on the Android 7.1 Nougat operating system and is compatible with Google’s flagship services.

In the US, the BlackBerry KeyOne is priced at $549. TCL has yet to set a price for the mobile device in Korea, according to Yonhap.

China-based TCL acquired the right to use the BlackBerry brand for its future phones and to sell them in global markets by signing a deal with Canada-based BlackBerry in December 2016.

The BlackBerry KeyOne was the first phone unveiled by TCL since the Chinese company bought the rights to the BlackBerry brand.

Prior to the acquisition, TCL had worked with BlackBerry as its manufacturing partner, buliding two Android-based BlackBerry phones — the DTEK50 and DTEK60.

By Sohn Ji-young (jys@heraldcorp.com)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Technology

South Korea’s information technology industry depends overwhelmingly on hardware, failing to keep pace with the global trend of focusing on software, a report said Monday.

According to the report by the Institute for Information & Communications Technology Promotion, software companies accounted for 15 percent of the total market capitalization of local IT firms in 2016, compared to 9 percent a decade ago.

(Yonhap)

Notably, the share of the IT hardware business, which includes South Korea’s top-cap Samsung Electronics Co., hovered over 50 percent, showing the IT industry’s excessive concentration in a certain sector.

The report divided the IT industry into eight categories — semiconductors, electronics parts, software, the Internet, IT service, home appliances, IT hardware and communications equipment.

The proportions of hardware and software were the percentages of each category’s combined market capitalization to the IT industry’s total market cap.

The report showed the share of South Korea’s software lagging far behind the United States and China.

Last year, software accounted for 62 percent of the US IT industry with hardware taking up the remainder, up from 50 percent 10 years earlier. China’s software proportion was 42 percent, compared to hardware’s 58 percent. Ten years earlier, the figures were 70 percent to 30 percent.

The numbers for Japan were 31 percent to 69 percent.

“Japan still has a high hardware proportion, but it differs with South Korea in that the country doesn’t rely excessively on a few specific sectors, except for electronics parts,” the report said.

The report said an analysis of the world top 100 IT companies in terms of market cap shows the industry’s focus shifting to software from hardware in a marked way. Software companies, which came to 24 in 1990, numbered 51 in 2015, overhauling the number of hardware firms for the first time, it said. (Yonhap)

Source: The Korea Herald > Business > Technology