LG Uplus Corp., one of three mobile carriers in South Korea, is aiming to boost its profile by expanding media and business-focused services beyond its established focus in telecommunications, its chief has said. Hwang Hyeon-sik, CEO of LG Uplus, said in a press conference Wednesday that he aims to raise the company's share of sales from non-telecom services to 30 percent of the total by 2025 from the current 20 percent. "The future B2B market will transition from a focus on infrastructur

Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday its latest flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G, has won the best smartphone award at the world's largest mobile telecommunications expo. The high-end model of the Galaxy S21 series was honored at the Global Mobile Awards at Mobile World Congress 2021 in Barcelona on Wednesday (local time), the South Korean tech giant said. The Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G, which was launched in January, competed for the award with the Galaxy S20 FE 5G, Apple iPhone 12 Pr

South Korea’s COVID-19 vaccine candidates can be evaluated through comparison with previously authorized vaccines. This means domestic vaccine developers will no longer have to recruit large control groups for a phase 3 clinical trial. According to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety on Wednesday, the government has revised guidelines for phase 3 clinical trials in a bid to accelerate the development of homegrown vaccines against COVID-19. Under the new rules, drugmakers would need j

Hundreds of 5G mobile users filed a joint lawsuit Wednesday against the country's three major mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. -- over disappointing quality of the latest generation networks, according to their legal representative. Around 520 people are taking part in the joint lawsuit, which argues that carriers have offered incomplete 5G services, leading to poor network quality, Kim Jin-wook, an attorney at law firm Joowon, said. "The action seeks compens

Conflicts deepening between IPTV operators and CJ ENM over proposed price hikes

South Korean biopharmaceutical companies have joined forces to co-develop and co-produce 100 million doses of a homegrown messenger RNA vaccine for COVID-19 next year, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare on Tuesday. Dubbed the “K-mRNA vaccine consortium,” it will be led by three major firms -- Hanmi Pharmaceutical, GC Pharma and ST Pharm -- and backed by the Korea Pharmaceutical and Bio-Pharma Manufacturers Association and the Korea Innovative Medicines Consortium, a gr

Netflix likely to continue legal battle over network usage fees; attention likely to turn to Google’s position, net neutrality

South Korea’s top automaker Hyundai Motor on Tuesday released a promotional video featuring K-pop supergroup BTS and robots, as part of efforts to reposition the company as a tech firm leading future technologies. Titled “Welcome to the Family with BTS,” the clip, which is around two and a half minutes long, was uploaded to the carmaker’s official YouTube channel. It seeks to make the field of robotics familiar to young people, by introducing Spot and Atlas of Boston Dy

Hanmi Pharmaceutical said Tuesday that efpeglenatide, its long-acting diabetes drug candidate, had significantly reduced the incidence of major adverse cardiovascular events and kidney disease, quoting the results of phase 3 clinical trials. Sanofi, which has purchased the license for efpeglenatide from Hanmi, presented the results of the global, large-scale clinical trial at the American Diabetes Association’s 81st Scientific Sessions. The phase 3 clinical trial involved 4,076 patient

Samsung Electro-Mechanics said Tuesday the company has developed a multi-layer ceramic capacitor with the largest storage capacity for 5G smartphones. Known as MLCC, the component enables stable supply and control of electric charge within electronic devices. It is as thin as human hair. At least 1,000 capacitors are needed for today’s smartphones per unit. The Samsung unit said the latest MLCC is 1.0 millimeter by 0.5 millimeter and is capable of storing 27 microfarads of electric c

South Korea will offer additional frequency bands for further 5G deployment and non-telecom companies are eligible to join the bid, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced Tuesday. 　 The wireless spectrums to be provided are a 600 megahertz block of a 28 Gigahertz frequency band and another 100MHz block of 4.7GHz. According to the ministry plan, the government will divide the 28GHz band into 12 blocks, and the 4.7GHz band into 10 blocks for the frequency rollout and companies or institution

LG Electronics Inc. said Tuesday its OLED TVs now support an advanced video processing technology for gamers at 4K resolution with 120Hz refresh rate as the South Korean tech giant tries to beef up its presence in the gaming community. Through a software update, LG said its 2021 OLED TV models, including the G1 and C1, are compatible with Dolby Vision Gaming at 4K, 120Hz, becoming the industry's first TV products to support the solution in such picture settings. Previously, LG's TV supported

Samsung SDS Co., an IT service unit of Samsung Group, on Tuesday said it has signed a partnership with US-based software firm ServiceNow Inc. to expand cloud-based businesses. Under the deal with ServiceNow, Samsung SDS will utilize its IT service management solutions to help enterprise customers' digital transformation efforts. The two also agreed to join forces to develop technologies in the field of artificial intelligence and natural language understanding to seek growth opportunities.

SK Telecom Co., South Korea's largest mobile carrier, said Tuesday it has teamed up with US call center technology company Genesys to launch a contact center service powered by artificial intelligence (AI). AI call centers have recently risen in popularity as they can reduce tasks handled by traditional call center agents by using speech recognition and natural language processing technology to respond to simple and repetitive user queries. SK Telecom said it has partnered with Genesys, which

Samsung Electronics Co. on Tuesday unveiled its new smartwatch interface that will run on the upcoming unified wearable operating system (OS) with Google as the South Korean tech giant eyes to expand its presence in the wearable device market. Samsung introduced One UI Watch at its virtual session of this year's Mobile World Congress, saying the new interface aims to deliver a more connected experience between the Galaxy Watch and smartphones. One UI Watch will be available for new OS jointl