CODE42, an autonomous transportation-as-a-service startup established in March this year, announced on Oct. 1 that it has successfully raised 30 billion won (US$25 million) in Pre-A funding, with investment by major Korean conglomerates including Kia Motors, SK Telecom, LG Electronics, and CJ Corp.
Intel Corp., the world’s No. 1 non-memory semiconductor producer, has shown off its advanced technology in memory semiconductors in Seoul, issuing a challenge to Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, the two leaders of the global memory industry.“We know that the yield of 128-layer NAND flash memory-bas
Internet traffic is soaring in South Korea with video and music streaming services becoming increasingly popular. Still, foreign content providers (CPs) generating the massive traffic are paying nothing or close to nothing for their network use. It is pointed out that the unlevel playing field will
The Korea Startup Forum, the Korea Internet Corporations Association, and local and foreign content providers such as Google, Naver, Netflix, Kakao and Facebook released a statement on Aug. 26, claiming that the South Korean government needs to completely overhaul its network fee calculation structu
South Korean debit and credit card firms are on alert as major fintech companies are entering the financial platform service market to challenge existing big players, such as Kakao Corp. and Naver Corp. Card firms are spending a huge amount of money to attract new customers, but an increasing number
South Korea's weight in the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) Emerging Market (EM) Index is expected to drop by 0.3 percentage point in a rebalancing scheduled for the end of this month. The amount of stock sales from passive funds due to the adjustment is estimated at 2 trillion won (
LG Electronics announced on Aug. 14 that it has signed a business agreement with Lumi of China on Aug. 13 to develop new technologies and expand business in the smart home sector. Under the agreement, the two companies will provide artificial intelligence smart home services in the global market bas
Samsung SDS will make a full-scale foray into the Southeast Asian IT service market by becoming the largest shareholder of CMC, a large IT service company in Vietnam.Samsung SDS announced on July 28 that it signed an investment contract with CMC on July 26 under a strategic investment agreement. CMC
As a boycott of Japanese goods continues following Japan’s restriction of exports to Korea, woes are growing among local distribution companies.Lotte Group has been hit the hardest by the boycott as it has many joint ventures with Japanese companies. Lotte Shopping has a 49 percent stake in Uniqlo K
Naver Business Platform (NBP) announced on July 11 that it has concluded an agreement with Deskera, the number one SaaS company in Southeast Asia.Deskera will provide cloud-based enterprise business software solutions to Southeast Asian customers through the global legion of the Naver Cloud Platform
Masayoshi Son, chairman of Japan’s SoftBank Group, discussed global economic issues with heads of major Korean business groups on July 4. Son met with the Korean business leaders at the Korean Furniture Museum in Seongbuk-dong, Seoul, after visiting President Moon Jae-in earlier in the day.In attend
The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) announced on July 4 that Apple filed for a consent decision with regard to its abuse of bargaining position in relation to SK Telecom, KT and LG U+. The KFTC recently investigated Apple regarding suspicions that it abused its superior position against the mobil
LG Electronics and LG International, the core affiliates of LG Group, have agreed to join Kakao’s blockchain platform Klaytn. As Samsung Electronics started to actively participate in the blockchain business by equipping the Galaxy S10 with a blockchain key store, LG is also trying to expand its bus
Naver and Naver's Japanese subsidiary LINE announced on June 26 that they will hold “AI Rush 2019,” a hackathon for artificial intelligence (AI) developers around the world.The hackathon is intended to stimulate technology development through a sharing of knowledge and experience in deep learnin
The South Korean cloud computing market has been dominated by global players such as Amazon Web Services and Microsoft, whose combined market share is currently as high as 80 percent. South Korean IT companies are trying to make a breakthrough with multi-cloud attracting much attention these days an
The growth of the fintech industry in Korea is slower than in other countries such as the United States due to an immature ecosystem and a delay in invigorating competition in the sector, the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said on June 6.In the United States and Europe, mega deals worth more th
The global artificial intelligence (AI) speaker market is showing signs of becoming a two-way race between U.S. and Chinese IT companies. Industry watchers say Korean companies are far behind the front-runners.The top two players in the global AI speaker market in the first quarter of this year we
Voices against the classification of game addiction as a disease are spreading throughout the ICT industry from their epicenter in the gaming industry. Games are closely related to the development of new technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) technology. In partic
SK Group hosted Social Value Connect (SOVAC) 2019 in Seoul on May 28. More than 4,000 entrepreneurs, non-profit organization members, college students and citizens attended the event proposed by SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won.Over 80 organizations and groups took part as partners in the event held u
Korean Android smartphone users used the YouTube application for a total of 38.8 billion minutes in April, a 50 percent increase from a year ago, according to a report from Wise App, an application analysis service provider.Korean smartphone users spent the most time on YouTube out of all smartphone