More than 1 in 3 North American smartphone owners use a made-in-Korea device, according to Strategy Analytics, a U.S. market research firm.The company said Apple became the biggest seller of smartphones in North America with a 37.6 percent market share last year. But Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics continued to increase their sales in U.S. and Canada with market shares of 26.6 percent and 7.1 percent, respectively.Market analysts said the two Korean companies’ combined sales are expected

Shinsegae Group vice chairman Chung Yong-jin will step down as board director of Shinsegae Co. and E-Mart, the retail giant said Wednesday amid ongoing prosecution’s investigations into those companies.The prosecution has for months been looking into whether Chung ordered Shinsegae affiliates to back their sister bakery firm, Shinsegae SVN, and allegations that E-Mart spied on its employees to discourage union activities.The CEOs of each Shinsegae affiliate will lead existing businesses while Ch

GM Korea unveiled Wednesday the Chevrolet Trax, a new compact sport utility vehicle that GM’s small vehicle development team has been leading the engineering and design of over the past five years. Amid the growing acceptance of small-engine, fuel-efficient vehicles globally, carmakers have recently been betting big on the niche segment ― compact SUVs. And the Korean-flavored Trax is the first of its kind to be introduced here. “Trax is a vehicle of a new concept. It combines functionality of SU

Lee Seung-han, chief executive of Homeplus, Tesco Korea, has decided to retire from his post in May, Tesco plc said. Lee will be staying on as a non-executive chairman of Homeplus Group.“He will also be appointed to chairman and professor emeritus of the Tesco Leadership Academy; remain chairman of the e-Paran Foundation; and become a personal adviser to me,” Philip Clarke, CEO of the British retailer, said in a statement Tuesday evening.Lee took the helm of what was then Samsung C&T’s retail di

Smile Microcredit Bank chairman Kim Seung-yu has expressed his intention to step down from his post, said the Financial Services Commission, the parent entity of the state-run bank.President Lee Myung-bak had installed his college classmate Kim as chief of the foundation, which runs more than 100 micro credit outlets across the country for the underprivileged.While the extended term of Kim, who had worked as chairman of Hana Financial Group, is scheduled to end in February 2015, he reportedly te

Someone casually pulls out his phone from his pocket during a coffee break in between a series of morning meetings, peers at it for a while before flipping open the lid to start talking into the mouthpiece.At the gesture, several of his colleagues look on in surprise ― shock even ― and they venture to ask him, “how in the world can you still be holding onto such a phone?”Flip phones are usually feature phones, also called second-generation or 2G phones running on the previous second-generation c

In 2013, an unfamiliar item may start landing on the desks of many chief information officers: the electricity bill for their corporate data centers.My bet is that bill will be unwanted, but not unexpected. For years, managers in charge of these facilities handled those cost while CIOs ― well, most never saw or cared about that side of the business.But after a dozen years of designing data centers in an ad hoc way, throwing inefficient, commodity servers at the problem of ever-rising demand for

Samsung Everland is setting out to help rehabilitate the homes of low-income families, featuring its strength in eco-friendly, energy-saving technology.The company on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding with Habitat for Humanity Korea to jointly help reconstruct old houses of poor families, as part of its corporate social responsibility efforts, officials said.In the signing ceremony, held at the company headquarters in central Seoul, CEO Kim Bong-yung delivered a 300 million won ($280,