Samsung Electronics on Tuesday announced its earnings guidance for the second quarter, which hinted an earnings surprise despite the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on major products. Samsung said the company would post 8.1 trillion won ($6.8 billion) in operating profit for the April to June period, which would be up about 22.7 percent from a year earlier and 25.6 percent from the previous quarter. But Q2 revenue stood at 52 trillion won, declining 7.36 percent on-year and 6.02 percent on-

The leaders of South Korea’s leading IT firms have called on lawmakers to change regulations for fair competition with foreign tech companies at the National Assembly on Monday. Kakao CEO Yeo Min-so, Naver CEO Han Seong-sook, Woowa Brothers CEO Kim Beom-joon and other tech leaders joined the forum held by lawmakers. “Local and foreign companies are offering their services here, but the regulations and penalties that bind them are seemingly different,” Kakao CEO Yeo said. W

A professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology is currently being investigated by the prosecution for allegedly handing over technology related to autonomous driving to China for financial gain, according to news reports and the ICT Ministry on Monday. The Daejeon Prosecutors‘ Office is currently investingating the professor, who reportedly received around 300 million won from a China-based college where he was dispatched for academic programs. The prosecutors ar

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong stressed the spirit of challenge toward the future at a meeting with employees in the startup program C Lab at the firm’s Suwon office in Gyeonggi Province on Monday. C-Lab is the South Korean tech firm’s in-house incubation program introduced in 2012 aimed at spreading creative organizational culture. Participating executives and employees will be given the opportunity to implement creative ideas they have come up with for one year.

Samsung Electronics may face tougher competition in the global 5G smartphone market starting in the second half this year when Apple launches its new smartphone that supports the fifth generation network, latest report showed Sunday. According to Strategy Analytics’ report, the total 5G smartphone sales this year is expected to reach 234 million devices, accounting around 15 percent of all smartphone sales. The number of 5G-compatible phones sold last year was 18.6 million, it added.

SK Telecom has launched an application that provides recommendations for restaurants by using big data analysis, the company said Sunday. The newly launched app uses big data compiled by the telecommunications firm’s mobile navigation service Tmap. According to the company, the number of users of the navigation services has reached 18 million, and it has some 1.8 billion points of data indicating restaurant visits over the past five years. SK Telecom noted that the new application util

Samsung Electronics will provide 100 percent performance-based bonuses to the employees of the semiconductor division next week, industry sources said Friday. The world’s biggest memory chip provider is planning to give its workers a half-year bonus, dubbed “target achievement incentives” based on their performances, which could be a maximum of 100 percent of their monthly salary. While the employees of the chipmaking unit are reportedly said to receive bonuses that are eq

After benefiting from the growing non-contact market in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in the first six months of this year, chipmakers are again faced with a bearish outlook for the remaining half of the year due to estimated falls in chip prices. In the third quarter, there are predominant forecasts that say the prices of both DRAM and NAND flashes will decline, leading to a slower growth of the overall memory market. According to market tracker DRAMeXchange, the fixed price of DDR4 8

A South Korean research team has discovered a way to ramp up the storage capacity of memory chips by 1,000 times, while raising the possibility of utilizing 0.5 nanometer process technology, the Ministry of Science on ICT announced Thursday. Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology’s Energy and Chemical Engineering professor Lee Jun-hee and his team have published a report on the discovery to international academic journal Science, winning attention from peers and the semicond

KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo stressed that the fifth-generation network would allow telecommunication firms to create new business opportunities across various industries, the company said Thursday. “If the telecommunications firms used to center on business-to-consumer services in the past, the industry will be involved more in the business-to-business sector in the future,” KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo said in a keynote speech during the Global TD-LTE Initiative’s online summit on Wednesday.

SK hynix announced Thursday it has started mass producing the industry’s fastest DRAM solution HBM2E, 10 months after the chipmaker completed its development in August last year. According to the company, the HBM2E supports over 460 gigabytes per second with 1,024 inputs/outputs based on the 3.6 gigabit-per-second performance of each pin. It is the fastest DRAM solution in the industry, which enables transmission of 124 full-HD movies (3.7GB each) per second. The density is 16GB, mor

Samsung Electronics plans to hire as many as 1,000 specialized experts in chip design and artificial intelligence by the end of this year, the tech giant said Wednesday. The company has already employed around 500 experts with master’s degrees and doctorates in semiconductors and AI in the first six months of the year, as part of its preparations for future technologies and businesses. It is planning to hire 500 more experts as part of accelerating a move towards the future, amid grow

Samsung Electronics Co. on Wednesday introduced its new solid state drive (SSD) product with an industry-leading capacity of up to 8 terabytes (TB). The world's largest memory chip producer said its second generation quad-level cell flash drive, the 870 QVO SATA SSD, will go on sale in 40 countries, starting in South Korea and the United States. SSD is a storage device for computing products that leverages NAND flash chips to provide non-volatile and rewritable memory, replacing hard disk d

The number of new 5G subscribers rose by a record high in May for this year, with total network users reaching just under 6.9 million, official data showed Tuesday. The latest findings showed 5G subscribers increasing by 536,997 in May compared to the month before, exceeding the previous monthly record of 520,478 reported in March, the Ministry of Science and ICT said. The overall number of 5G users stood at over 6.87 million, just 14 months after the country adopted the ultrahigh speed telec

KT announced Tuesday that it has introduced automated robotic solutions at a local auto parts manufacturer’s factory. The South Korean telecom firm’s smart factory robot Cobot has been installed at a facility of Parkwon -- a manufacturer of steel balls for steering and power transmission systems -- in Jecheon, North Chungcheong Province. The system can help in handling loading, packaging and other repetitive work procedures that are physically taxing, often causing injuries, acc