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-ca

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 con

The Korea Herald is publishing a series of articles highlighting South Korea’s promising start-ups in the emerging sectors of digital health care and next-generation medical devices. This is the fourth installment. -- Ed.While humans have yet to reach Mars, unmanned missions to the planet have already begun. Since 2012, NASA’s rover Curiosity has been studying the planet’s rocks and soils by using laser induced breakdown spectroscopy, or LIBS. 　The technology works by shooting a high-energy lase

Mobile data traffic doubled before and after the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye, a mobile phone operator said Friday, as people exchanged news of the historic ruling through their mobile messaging apps.The ruling immediately removed Park from office, about three months after she was impeached by the National Assembly over a corruption and influence-peddling scandal.Lee Jung-mi, acting chief of the Constitutional Court, delivers the ruling on the impeachmen

LG Electronics’ newest flagship smartphone G6 hit market shelves here Friday as planned, despite the nation being mostly engrossed in the news of the confirmation of former President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment.LG has vowed to seek a turnaround in its mobile communications business with the latest G6, but inquiries about the new product on the first day of its official launch turned out to lag market expectations, especially in the morning when the court ruling was televised nationwide. Rather t

South Korean mobile messaging giant Kakao has introduced a new direct bank account transfer function on its simplified mobile payment platform Kakao Pay, further expanding the scope of its mobile-friendly money transfer service.　 Kakao said Thursday that it has added the “to account” money transfer function on Kakao Pay -- directly accessible via the mobile messaging app KakaoTalk -- which lets users transfer money directly to any local bank account. (Kakao)Kakao Pay is a simplified mobile payme

Samsung Electronics is considering the relocation of its manufacturing facilities for home appliances from Mexico to the United States, a senior Samsung official confirmed Thursday. At a media event to introduce the company’s latest premium model washing machine, dubbed “Flex Wash,” Suh Byung-sam, executive vice president of the digital appliances business of the consumer electronics division at Samsung, admitted that the company is seriously reviewing such a plan at the moment. “The company is

SK Telecom’s core 5G roaming technology has won approval to be studied this year by Next Generation Mobile Networks, the South Korean mobile carrier said Wednesday. NGMN is an international organization established by 28 telecom companies around the world in 2006 to discuss the standardization of wireless network infrastructure and telecom services.  SK Telecom's logo (Yonhap)SKT’s technology is one of four chosen technologies out of 20 proposed by other telecom companies. The Korean mobile carr

Samsung Electronics announced Wednesday it has launched a light-emitting diode module based on a fine chip scale package. Named “T Type 2.5 Generation,” the new LED module will be applied in outdoor lighting in tunnels and on streets. Samsung’s Chip Scale Package, known as CSP, is the company’s flagship package of chips for designing tiny electronics products. Users can achieve brightness a nd a color temperature of up to 5,700 Kelvin by combining more than two of the new LED modules. T Type 2.5

South Korean mobile carrier KT has partnered with Nonghyup Life Insurance to introduce a new digital health care-based insurance program that offers benefits to a customer based on his or her fitness achievements tracked by wearable devices.The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday, agreeing to merge KT’s Internet of Things technology and big data management capabilities with Nonghyup Life Insurance’s insurance package planning and marketing expertise. A woman wearing a fi

Apple Inc. captured 79.2 percent of global smartphone profits last year, according to the latest research by Strategy Analytics on Wednesday, highlighting the US technology giant's ability to maximize pricing and minimize production costs. The global smartphone industry was estimated to have posted total operating profits of $53.7 billion last year, with Apple's operating profit standing at $44.9 billion, the research showed.Apple's Iphone (Yonhap)Apple's operating profit margin stood at 32.4 pe

Google Inc. said Tuesday that it will add more languages to its new artificial intelligence translation system and significantly improve quality and reduce errors of services offered.In November, the US Internet giant announced that Google Translate has been switched to a new system called Neural Machine Translation, an end-to-end learning framework that learns from millions of examples.A person trying out Google Translate on his smartphone (Yonhap)"Over the next couple of weeks, these improveme

Bret Hartman, chief technology officer of the security business group of Cisco, Tuesday said his company is in the process of enhancing its research team for security threats, specifically targeting Korean businesses and organizations amid the recently escalating threats to the country. Cisco has a research team of over 250 experts on information security, data science and hacking, known as Talos, which detects and defends from more than 200 million attacks on a daily basis. “We do not currently

China has reportedly stopped issuing new service licenses to South Korean games in an apparent retaliation against Seoul’s latest preparations to install a US missile defense system in Korea.　　According to Korean media outlets Tuesday, the Chinese government informed local game publishers earlier this month that it would no longer issue licenses — which a company needs in order to service a game in China — for Korea-made games.　The measure is “likely related to Korea’s deployment of the Terminal

Line Friends, the character merchandising unit of Naver-owned mobile messenger Line, will open its first official store in the US at Times Square in New York City in July, the company said Monday.The upcoming store, spanning 430 square meters, will be located on 1515 Broadway, which houses the renowned “Lion King” musical.It will be the first-ever large-scale Asian character brand store to open in the US and will also commemorate the one-year anniversary of Line’s public listing on the New York