Samsung releases ‘Galaxy Round’, the first phone with a curved display   The new “Galaxy Round” phone from South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics will make its debut in the domestic market this week, the nation’s top mobile operator SK Telecom said Wednesday. The most prominent feature of the latest Galaxy series phone is its curved display. It also features a 5.7-inch screen, the same as the Galaxy Note 3, with a…

Luxury car booking service Uber launched in South Korea this summer, and this week they have teamed up with one of Korea’s hottest startups, Between, in order to leverage the companies extensive user network of couples, particularly in the Seoul metropolitan area which has a population of almost 24 million. Between started life as  a messaging app for couples, but is now looking to start generating revenue, having ac quired over 4 million users,…

Korean mobile game maker Gamevil has acquired Com2uS. Gamevil announced on October 4 that it signed an agreement to acquire a 21.37-percent stake in Com2uS for 70 billion won. Under the terms of the deal, Gamevil will have the controlling stake in Com2uS. Although Gamevil is the acquiring party in this transaction, it actually did less business than Com2uS last year. Gamevil reported full-year revenues of KRW 70.2 billion ($65.5 million), compared…

K-Cube Ventures invests $500M won in Mobile Beauty Content Company “Seed Paper” Seed paper shares practical beauty tips for its users through its mobile lifestyle content platform. The service is linked KakaoTalk Plus Friend, which is a premium service from Korea’s top mobile messaging platform, KakaoTalk. Well-known experts in the field of beauty and cosmetics, including Hong Cha, Saem-Mul Jung, and Hyun-Cheung Woo, provide practical tips through the service, which includes tips…

  For a number of years Korea has been firmly established as a global production base for core display materials. This is partly due to intense competition in the industry between the two domestic heavyweights LG and Samsung. Chinese display makers are making aggressive investments in the sector, but investments in the materials and components for next-generation display are still concentrated in Korea, and China has some way to catch up the…

As Korean President Park Geun-hye pushes to promote fair competition in the Korean economy (currently dominated by a small number of family-run conglomerates), the country’s number one internet company, Naver, has been coming under fire again for allegedly abusing its power.   Startup “Memo This” developed a service that allows users to stick memos on any website for use by anyone who vistits the site at a later date. The theory is…

Korea was the first nation where online gaming was a lucrative career. And, having lived in Korea for five years, I have seen the huge potential in the online gaming market here, which attracts gamers to “PC Rooms”, like the one below, 24 hours a day. But, surprisingly, Korean produced games are now losing the fight against foreign competition. It has been claimed recently that Korea is losing its reputation as an…

On September 16, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) opened the ‘Born Global Startups’ (forgive the slightly dodgy name) project at the Future Global Business Start-up Support Center in Seoul. The twenty selected teams, three accelerators and two business incubation centers participated in the event. The aim is to support startups with strategy and to attract investment. The program will also finance three Korean incubators including Venture Square (teamed…

The Background For those who don’t know it, the internet situation in South Korea is very different from what you might expect. Most impressively, Google, only claims around a 2% share of the search market. So who services this population of 50M, one of the most connected and tech savvy in the World? Naver, a subsidiary of Korea’s largest internet company NHN Corp, has controlled over 70% of the Korean search market…

Korean Internet users are adopting mobile faster than any other country in the world and the number of mobile users of key Internet services like Facebook and YouTube is increasing explosively. According to Facebook 90% of 11 million Korean users who access Facebook at least once a month (MAU) access their Facebook accounts on mobile devices. This figure is far higher than the global Facebook average of 71%. The global Facebook MAU…

Kakao Talk remains the premiere platform to access the exceptionally lucrative Korean gaming market, with examples such as the wildly popular `Angry Birds’ (coming soon) and `Candy Crush Saga’ (already available) among many other titles on the platform. KakaoTalk has emerged as the key channel for overseas game companies’ in Korea. Preparations are well under way for the release of Angry Birds in Q3 2013. It has also been rumored that EA…

Don’t want to follow a boring tour guide with a white flag guiding you to boring and overcrowded tourist spots? myRealTrip is an open marketplace for local guides and travellers that offers authentic customized guide services. Simply put, MyRealTrip is crowd-sourced tour guides in English, Korean and Japanese. Traditional tours are often devoid of personal touch and often lure travellers into trips that are geared towards commercial advantage, and often misses the…

With Asian messaging apps battling it out for the global market and with messaging apps now being considered a threat to traditional Internet giants like Facebook and Google (especially amongst teens), it is very exiting for us at beSUCCESS to present beGLOBAL speaker Jeanie Han, CEO of Line for Europe and the Americas. Dr. Jeanie Han, who was recruited out of Paramount Pictures, is in charge of running LINE in the United…

Seedstars World is an exclusive worldwide competition to discover the best startups in emerging startup scenes. The competition is taking place March to December 2013 in 20 cities across the globe. One startup per country will be selected to participate in the final, held in Spring 2014, in Switzerland. The winners will receive prizes such as equity based investments, entry into acceleration programs, advertising and hosting services. How to apply? Visit this link and fill…

*This is part III to the series on Korea’s cybersecurity issues. We all know that security is a vital investment for survival. In this article, I will cover: Issues involving China; Issues involving North Korea; Their implications; Evolution of cyberattacks, and APT; Korean government’s plans; and Reactions to those plans. For Korea, the biggest concerns are ‘Chinese and North Korean hackers’. Some may remember the attack on the U.S. by Chinese hackers who succeeded…

World’s fastest mobile network launched by South Korean telco, SKT SK Telecom, Korea’s biggest mobile carrier, launched world’s first LTE-Advanced network called LTE-A, with speeds twice as fast as the current existing service. LTE-A is also 10 times faster than the 3G network. This service will be available in Seoul and 42 other major cities and provinces in Korea, as well as in 103 universities. How is this in line with global…

Around 10 years ago, ITU said that “There are few recommendations that one can offer a country as advanced in ICT as Korea. Broadband penetration is the world’s highest.” –  and that still holds true today in 2013. 1. The Korean Telecom Market  South Korea has a driven telecom market dynamics. It has one of the fastest growth in smartphone numbers with around a 23 million increase in the span of 2…

Zuckerberg (center) walks into Samsung Electronics’ building to meet with executives of the Korean tech giant. Samsung We wrote earlier that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg will be in Korea (read the article here). The meeting with the Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, Lee Jae-yong was one of the key points in Zuckerberg’s short itinerary in Korea. It was speculated that he will be visiting President Park Geun-Hye – but he had also…

Business is a zero-sum game. Collaboration is a plus-sum game. Everyone seems to be talking about “The Sharing Economy” – everybody literally gets a share of your meal, and vice versa. Take the Korean startup, Zipbob. So: Forget zero-sum games; people are all about “collaborative consumption” now. And the people in Asia, especially Korea, are rising up. Wait. Collaborative consumption? Short answer: commercial arrangements and transactions in which participants share and access…

Good thing the Koreans went for the fiber early. South Korea dominates the top lists when it comes to broadband, according to latest edition of Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the three months ending December 31, 2012. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Daegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Here are some highlights from Akamai’s official press release: Global On…