LG and Samsung scuffle over alleged display patent infringements. The Korean government calls for a return to innovation, rather than court battles.

Samsung and LG have regained 1st and 2nd place in the US phone market, with poor sales of the iPhone 5 responsible for the increased market share by the two Korean manufacturers.

Olleh’s Smartphone Film Awards are back this year and this time they are accepting international entrants. There is nearly $50k up for grabs in prize money, plenty of high-tech gadgets to give away, and the possibility of an entry at the Beijing Film Awards for the winner!

Breaking news from beLAUNCH this week is that ‘Designer CEO’, Bongjin Kim (Woowa Bros) will be joining our speaker line-up. This is a unique opportunity to hear one of the most influential Korean entrepreneurs the joys and struggles of being a startup CEO.

Toshiba is due to release screens as early as March 2013 that dramatically reduce power consumption to 30% of their current best model.

A Japanese firm (or beautiful Tehrani woman) has released a mini portable keyboard for smartphones. Something entirely useless, to go along with your Smart Fork…

Time is running out to buy Early Bird booths and tickets for beLAUNCH. beLAUNCH is the flagship event from beSUCCESS, and Asia’s largest tech / entrepreneurship conference, by daily attendance. In 2013 we expect 100+ VCs, 350 Startups, 2,500+ ticket holders, 50 top speakers, and global media. Come join us!

The Optimus G set a new sales record for LG, which sold more than 1M units in the three months after release, and the follow-up is set for release in April: Optimus G Pro

Large Korean corporations have been accused of stealing innovation from startups, and copying it, backed by massive marketing budgets and distribution channels. This has the short and long term potential to seriously damage the thriving tech ecosystem in Korea. Your opinions on this are welcome.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 23 Jan.

Qualcomm will be investing $23 million in Pantech, the company ranked 3rd in the mobile industry in South Korea. Who is Pantech? Will there be a shift in dynamics? Will there be significant changes made in the industry? Why is Kanye West relevant in all this? beSUCCESS answers these questions.

500 year old Oxford University Press has signed a major partnership deal with Korean iPortfolio as the preferred supplier for their expanding digital textbook platform. iPortfolio expects royalty revenue of at least $100k per year as a result of the deal, which is based on a new model for Korean software exports.

The creator of “Between”, VCNC (CEO: Jaewook Park) recently received a whopping 3 billion KRW (approx. 3 million USD) investment from four investors.

Korea has GooDoc, and America’s got ZocDoc. Earlier on this month, ZocDoc received more than 2.5 million people visits and 130% bump in bookings. Annual physical tests booked on ZocDoc are up about 650% since 2010. Consequently, it has raised $95 million in funding to date. What are their 3 reasons for success? In Part II, we will investigate the differences and provide an analysis of the current Korean market.

Apple Korea will attempt to improve its flagging sales figures by holding a one-day sales event in the run-up to Lunar New Year, on February 10th. “Red Friday” became an annual event in 2011, similar to “Black Friday” held in the US. The event is held in several Asian countries, including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea.

Global games platform, Trion Worlds, has signed a major deal with South Korea’s renowned XL Games to bring the much anticipated MMORPG, “ArcheAge”, to Western markets.

Will Bada fuse with the TIZEN project? The Tizen Association was formed in 2012 by executives from Samsung, Intel, NTT Docomo and Vodafone to support the open source software. Having Samsung’s own ecosystem will give them a full control on features, updates and hardware specifications of all of the products. But some say that if Samsung moves away from Android, they would be shooting themselves in the foot. Before they were introduced Android to their phones, Samsung had a line of feature phones. Samsung tried making their own OS for smartphones, Bada – but some say that this was pretty much a flop, and some say that it is still being developed.

LG U+, Korea’s third-largest mobile carrier, will release the nation’s first unlimited-data plans for customers using LTE networks. From Jan. 31 to April 30, customers who switch from another provider will be eligible for the free plan, fueling the intensifying battle for new LTE customers.

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 27 Jan.

Samsung Electronics sold 213 smartphones globally last year. This figure is higher than the combined sales of number No. 2 and No. 3 ranked manufacturers, Apple and Nokia. This figure also represents the first time in the company’s history that it has crossed the 30% of market share mark.