South Korean tech firms are rushing to expand their investment in Vietnam in line with their effort to build a new production base in the Southeast Asian country.South Korea's Seoul Semiconductor Co. has won a license to invest $300 million to build a semiconductor production factory in northern Vietnam, industry sources said Tuesday.Last week, the provincial government of Ha Nam gave the green light to Seoul Semiconductor to build the 750,000-square-meter production site that will house a semic

South Korean Internet giant Naver on Tuesday launched a new automated translation app for four languages -- Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English.The app, Papago, can translate text, speech and images of words or phrases into the target language using Naver’s translation database and self-developed artificial intelligence software, the company said.When deciphering words with multiple possible meanings, Papago shows contextual images to prevent mistranslation. When translating currencies, it aut

A plan by Samsung Electronics to add a mobile application created and distributed by the Korean government to its new Galaxy Note phablet sparked a backlash from the main opposition party and civic groups, which called it an attempt to use technology as a propaganda tool. According to local reports quoting sources in the tech industry, Samsung Electronics has recently decided to include the government app service, named Government 3.0, on the list of apps to be installed automatically on the Gal

Song Dae-hyun (second from left), executive vice president and CEO of LG Electronics‘ Russia operation holds a letter of recommendation by a local media Hi-tech.mail that selected LG Signature OLED TV as the most recommendable product in the TV category this year. (LG Electronics)

Samsung Electronics is expected to spend more on facility investment than its rivals in the second half of this year to maintain its dominance in the 3-D NAND flash segment, amid heated rivalry in the global semiconductor market. According to market research firm IC Insights, Samsung is predicted to increase its capital expenditure by 120 percent in the July-December period from $3.4 billion in the previous half to $7.5 billion. The research firm had earlier forecast that Samsung would spend abo

Samsung Electronics is facing competition from the Chinese companies Huawei, Oppo and Vivo, whose combined smartphone market share was 20 percent globally in the second quarter of this year, industry watchers said Monday.According to data from research firm IDC, Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest smartphone-maker, held a 22.4 percent share of the market and Apple’s share stood at 11.8 percent. Huawei took a 9.4 percent share, while Oppo had 6.6 percent and Vivo had 4.8 percent. When the ma

Samsung BioLogics, a contract manufacturer of biologic drugs under Samsung Group, will apply for preliminary approval to begin its initial public offering process this week, the Korea Exchange said Monday.The South Korean drugmaker plans to submit its application to pursue am IPO on the country’s main bourse KOSPI on Thursday, the KRX said. Under this timeline, Samsung BioLogics will likely complete its public listing by November as scheduled. Samsung BioLogics declined to comment on the potenti

The new Galaxy Note phablet by Samsung Electronics Co. is drawing attention worldwide with its iris-scanning feature that allows a user to unlock the smartphone in the blink of an eye. Samsung unveiled the phablet, the successor to the Note 5, in New York earlier this week in a bid to keep up the momentum of its smartphone sales after widening its lead over Apple Inc. in the global smartphone market this year. The launch of the Galaxy Note 7 came ahead of the latest iPhone launch, expected in th

South Korea’s No. 1 mobile game developer Netmarble Games is seeking to go public on the nation’s benchmark stock exchange KOSPI in the coming months. The company has long gauged its initial public offering in Korea or the U.S. as part of its push for global expansion.　A NASDAQ debut could help it elevate its presence in overseas markets but there was risk of being undervalued as compared to KOSPI. Netmarble founder Bang Joon-hyuk (Netmarble)Sources say its recent failed attempt to acquire Playt

NEW YORK -- Sprawling roughly between West 16 Street and Hudson Street in Manhattan, the Meatpacking District was where meat factories were up and running in the early 1900s. The blocks in the area, currently filled with upscale restaurants and bars and fashion boutiques, have since become the gem of New York City, attracting millions of tourists, partygoers and locals every year.Samsung Electronics opened its marketing center, dubbed Samsung 837, in the heart of the district at Washington Stree

NEW YORK -- When Samsung Electronics first launched the Galaxy S6 Edge featuring a curved display in 2015, it caught the eyes of many thanks to its stunning, unprecedented design.However, Samsung fell short of gaining traction in sales as it failed to catch up with the demand for the S7 Edge due to glitches in producing the display curved on both sides.Now having achieved a rather satisfactory level of production yields for the Edge display, Samsung said it would put more focus on smartphone mod

South Korea’s three mobile carriers SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus announced their subsidy plans for the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on Saturday as they began receiving preorders for Samsung Electronics’ latest smartphone on the day.Under current law, local smartphone buyers who purchase a smartphone and sign up for a payment plan here can choose from one of the following two subsidies -- an upfront, one-time subsidy that can be used in purchasing a new device, or a monthly 20 percent discount on the use

South Korea's three mobile carriers -- SK Telecom Co., KT Corp., and LG Uplus Corp. -- said Saturday they began taking preorders for Samsung Electronics Co.'s latest Galaxy Note 7, which is expected to hit the local market later this month.South Korean customers can preorder the smartphone on the operators' web sites. Preorders for the newest Galaxy phablet can also be made at the mobile carriers' local retail stores.The Galaxy Note 7 with 64GB of capacity is priced at around 988,900 won (US$880

Apple Inc. surprised the local music and mobile service industry Friday by abruptly launching its streaming music service Apple Music in South Korea. The tech giant simultaneously launched Apple Music in 110 countries in July of last year, but had left it unserviced in the South Korean market for more than a year.Its sudden decision to start up the service drew mixed reactions, raising questions on its impact on the music service industry here, which has so far been dominated by local firms.Kore

Star designers sided with Apple in a longstanding court battle with Samsung Electronics, according to news reports. More than 100 design experts told the U.S. Supreme Court that Samsung should pay the hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to Apple for infringing the patented designs of iPhone, in a brief filed with the court on Thursday. The big names include Calvin Klein, Paul Smith and Alexander Wang and Lord Norman Foster, who is the designer behind Apple’s Campus 2 project.The Supreme C