beSUCCESS investigates how LG will spend its 19 billion USD investment.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 9 Jan.

54Million Smart TVs were sold in 2012. but many consumers were non-fussed with the usability of many of the new features and globally only about 60% of internet ready TVs were ever connected (only 10% regularly connected in Europe). Can Samsung attract better usability reviews with its new products?

In November 2012, 55% of the companies that have not used a cloud service said that they plan to use it within 18 months. Desktop virtualization has been the number 1 interest of Korean companies for 2 consecutive years. Which tells us that there will be a definite expansion of cloud services within the Korean companies this year. Although the figures seem meek compared to 79% (Australian companies seem to be very enthusiastic), this could mean more potential for Korea, as we will be able to see that such virtual environments globally sued and acknowledged.

Samsung sold its millionth Galaxy Note II in Korea just over 90 days after its launch, in September. This means that Galaxy Note II’s domestic and global sales now reached 5 million units. Let’s compare this with Galaxy Note 1. In its early phase sales, it took Samsung 10 months to reach 10 million sales. We expect that Galaxy Note II will achieve the same feat in 4-5 months given the current…

What are the key words for IT Korea 2013? What are some of the key words for the IT market in Korea for this year? According to Gartner, and The National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA), the 10 key words for 2013 are: The beSUCCESS team thinks that mobile platform wars, enterprise app stores, cloud computing, and intellectual property rights are the main key words in 2013. beSUCCESS will be writing more…

With the year 2012 behind us, beSUCCESS analyses 4 hottest issues in Korea for the first week of 2013. Censorship in SNS services The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family (yes, such a ministry does exist in Korea)  passed a new bill that protects youths from cyber bullying. They passed a bill that disables them from using swear words of slang on their KakaoTalk and other SNS services. Due to the demand that…

First-come, first-serve! ‘beLAUNCH 2013’ will be providing FREE standard promotion videos for the first 10 startups who register for startup booths! Please note that the startups have to provide a script to introduce their services and provide $100 to pay for the voice-overs. Setting Up a booth at beLAUNCH 2013 is a great way to reach out to potential customers, partners, investors and media directly. beLAUNCH will be attended by entrepreneurs, startup…

With ‘Gangnam Style’ ranked #1 search term across 5+ countries (you might be surprised to find your country name in there!), Korea continues to amaze the world. beSUCCESS investigates and analyzed the hottest trends in Korea, 2012.

In early December, the major Korean telcos launched Joyn, a mobile messenger service which would allow subscribers to message, call and send files to other users. This could enhance the market entry cost greatly and make it difficult for small IT startups in Korea.

Currently, Samsung Electronics is investing huge amounts of resources for the TIZEN expansion across the world. Already, the mobile OS ‘BADA’ platform is being synchronized to the TIZEN format, and considering the experience with BADA smartphones, selling around 20 million worldwide, it seems that Samsung’s decision will allow Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone series to be increasingly independent by decreasing the dependence on Google and others.

Korea is the first country to boast a professional online gaming industry and there are [infrequent] stories of gamers dying at PC rooms, having spent days in their seats without sleep, surviving on coffee and instant noodles. It is perhaps unsurprising that the government took action to address the national obsession with online gaming and in May 2011 introduced regulation banning under 16s from pc gaming after midnight. Yesterday, Korea voted in…

South Korean entrepreneurs are holding their breath, as the country issues in a new era, having voted in its first female leader in history. Park Geun Hye (60), whose childhood was spent in the presidential palace, is the daughter of assassinated dictator (1979) Park Chung Hee, whose autocratic 18 year rule, tough economic policies and questionable human rights record cast a shadow over her candidacy. Yet, there are signs that she is…

On the 4th December, Shakr (http://shakr.com/), a Korean startup company received fundings from the Super Angel Fund, 500 Startups (http://500.co/) for the first time. This is a huge milestone for Korean startup companies, with an even bigger implication for the Korean startup ecosystem.

Research and Markets, an international market research and market data firm announced the addition of the “The Future of Mobile Health Market in Korea” report to their offering.

Samsung kept its No.1 position in the Global smartphone market the in 3rd quarter of 2012. According to Bloomberg, Samsung sold 5,6300,000 smartphones in the 3rd quarter of 2012 which is the highest record in global telecom market.

The Vega R3 has been gaining huge attention because of its innovative functions, features and its practical applications in real life. Experts take optimistic views for the future of the Vega R3. We will now have to see if Pantech will recapture the No.2 place in the smartphone market in Korea which they are aiming at.

Samsung is recruiting people for 3 areas: game planning, 2D/3D design, and Server Client developments in the Samsung group. There were no confirmed reports about what segment of the gaming industry Samsung would enter. It will be interesting to watch the entry of this technology giant into the gaming industry.

After LG U+’s first run in the market competing with Set-top box model, SK and KT Broadband joined
the new competition. New smart TV “Set-top box model” has capability to use apps including web-
searching, VOD, and live TV show functions.

A new app was developed that translates Korean to English (and vice versa) that surpasses Google’s current translation services. Korean Tourism Organization announced that Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) had finished developing an app named ‘Genie Talk’ that they have been working for the past 4 years. ETRI held a conference celebrating its launch and will be providing this service for free.