South Korea’s Netmarble Games officially went public on Korea’s main bourse Kospi on Friday, marking the country’s biggest initial public offering in seven years. 　Shares of the Korean mobile game giant opened for trading at 165,000 won ($146.70), above its IPO price of 157,000 won, and rose as high as 171,500 won, up 9.2 percent, in early morning trading before falling to hover slightly below the day’s opening price.The stocks closed at 162,000 won, down 1.82 percent from the opening price. The

South Korean mobile carriers' Internet-based TV businesses have emerged as their stable source of profit on the back of an increase in the number of subscribers, data by the companies showed Friday.The country's three mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. -- saw sales from their Internet protocol television business jump 10 percent to 20 percent in the first quarter of this year from a year ago, according to the data based on their first-quarter earnings reports. (Yonhap

Lee Sang-chul, South Korea’s former communications minister and chief of mobile carrier LG Uplus, is currently advising China’s Huawei, according to industry sources Thursday. On the official homepage of Huawei, Lee is named as chief adviser of Huawei, The Korea Herald confirmed.  Former communications minister and chief of mobile carrier LG Uplus Lee Sang-chul (Yonhap)The website also described Lee as standing adviser of LG Uplus and LG Group. But LG Group denied the indication, saying he had n

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles delving into the economic policies and tasks expected of the new Moon Jae-in administration. This is the second installment -- Ed.South Korea’s new President Moon Jae-in faces the challenging task of bolstering the information and communication technology sector as the country struggles to retain its footing in the fast-advancing field of ICT amid growing competition from foreign rivals.During his campaign trail, Moon pledged to spur growth thr

SK hynix moved up the global ranking of semiconductor suppliers with the largest sales improvement in the first quarter of 2017, showed a market researcher Thursday. The South Korean memory chip giant rose to become the world’s third-largest chipmaker by first-quarter sales, moving up two notches from a year earlier, according to data provided by research firm IC Insights. SK hynix raised $5.5 billion in sales for the first three months of the year, the data showed.  (Yonhap)The market researche

The iPhone 7, the flagship smartphone of US tech giant Apple Inc., was the most sold handset around the globe in the first quarter, data showed Thursday, while Samsung Electronics Co. mostly shipped budget models over the cited period.According to the data compiled by industry tracker Strategy Analytics, Apple sold 21.5 million units of the iPhone 7 in the January-March period. The figure accounts for 6.1 percent of the combined shipment of 353 million units posted by smartphone makers around th

South Korean smartphone users mostly used the WiFi network to enjoy video-streaming content rather than to use the long-term evolution services, data showed Thursday, apparently due to the burdensome price of the high-speed mobile network.According to the survey compiled by Nielsen Korea on South Korean users of Android smartphones in March, the WiFi network accounted for 90.7 percent of their time spent on video streaming services. Only 9.3 percent used the LTE networks to watch video content.

Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Tab S3 will hit the market Thursday. It is the first new Samsung tablet PC in two years, but the prospects of the global tablet PC market are bleak due to falling demand. The South Korean tech titan said Wednesday it will release in Korea the 9.7-inch AMOLED display tablet PC equipped with the company’s signature S Pen and four embedded stereo speakers.The Galaxy Tab S3 was unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in February, but its official launch was strategically po

Samsung Electronics will exhibit its lifestyle TV "The Frame" at the 57th Venice Biennale opening this weekend in Italy, the tech firm said Wednesday."The Frame" copies art with a bezel that looks like picture frames, a design concept targeting European consumers who work television sets into home decor. It offers UHD picture quality when turned on and shows a work of art when turned off.   Artist Lee Wan poses in front of "The Frame" TVs from Samsung Electronics that display his video work "Mad

Some Facebook users in Korea were unable to access their social media accounts Tuesday morning, the day of the country’s presidential election.At around 10 a.m., users said they tried to log into their Facebook accounts, but were not able to gain access for around 50 minutes. The site only said, “Sorry, something went wrong. We’re working on it and we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.”The Korean arm of the social media giant issued a statement around 11:30 a.m., saying, “Some users had difficul

Naver Corp., South Korea's top Internet portal operator, plans to unveil an artificial intelligence embedded smart speaker, the WAVE, this summer, industry sources said Tuesday.According to the sources, Naver and its Japanese affiliate LINE Corp. are working to launch the smart speaker based on its AI virtual assistant, Clova CLOud Virtual Assistant, before the end of the first half. Naver Corp.'s auto infotainment platform, IVI (Yonhap)The WAVE speaker is said to be unveiled in Japan under the

LG Electronics Inc. on Monday ruled out the rumor that the company is considering the acquisition of South Korea's No. 3 smartphone manufacturer, Pantech Co.Through a regulatory filing made after getting the request from the Korea Exchange, the main bourse operator, South Korea's No. 2 tech giant said it has never considered purchasing Pantech. (Yonhap)After facing financial troubles, Pantech was normalized in late 2015 after Solid Inc. listed the company on the secondary bourse Kosdaq acquired

As South Korea prepares to hold its 19th presidential election Tuesday, the country’s major internet companies have set out to provide the public with accurate, timely and convenient information about the candidates and real-time voting updates. Naver, the operator of Korea’s most widely-accessed portal website, has a special section on its election page that will continuously update voting information as the results come in. The portal operator said it will display the information based on real

In its 20th year in India, LG Electronics has grown to a $2 billion brand, owing to localization efforts, the company said Monday. According to company data, LG’s sales there grew about 60 times to reach $2 billion as of last year, having first entered the Indian market in 1997.  Indian consumers check out a water purifier at an LG Electronics shop in Noida, northern India, on Monday. (LG Electronics)In the past two decades, the number of LG employees and executives operating in the country expa

Affordable flip phones launched by Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have proved popular among the elderly, according to statistics provided by SK Telecom’s T world Direct on Monday, which was Parents’ Day. Samsung’s Galaxy Folder LTE and LG’s Wine Smart Jazz were best-sellers among consumers in their 60s and 70s, comprising 77 percent and 75 percent of purchases respectively. (LG Electronics)The two representative clamshell phones were set at 57,000 won ($50.30) and 31,000 won, respectivel