South Korea is losing global market share in the liquid-crystal display (LCD) and flat-screen TV sectors, and must innovate to counter increased competition, a market research company said yesterday.
"It is across a fairly wide spectrum of IT product lines that Korea is suffering from competitiveness of other regions" such as Taiwan, China, Europe and North America, said Derek Lidow, president and CEO of iSuppli Corp, which compiles data on various technology industries.
"[South] Korea is battling on many fronts and has unfortunately been forced into a more defensive position. [South] Korea is being outspent and also outmarketed," he said.
Samsung Electronics Co and LG.Philips LCD Co are the world's top makers of LCDs, used in computer screens, cellphones and televisions.
But Lidow said that Taiwan replaced South Korea as the world's largest LCD maker late last year, and in the market for LCD TVs, South Korea has slipped to third place from second, now trailing Japan and "the combination of Taiwanese companies with Chinese production partners."
Lidow spoke to journalists just ahead of this year's Seoul Digital Forum, which brings together leading industry figures including Microsoft Corp CEO Steve Ballmer, Qualcomm Inc CEO Paul Jacobs, Renesas Technology Corp president Satoru Ito and Hwang Chang-gyu, head of Samsung Electronics Co's semiconductor business, over three days through tomorrow.
South Korea has also seen its market share gains in mobile phones slow, he said, last year being "effectively contained by a resurgence in European and North American competitiveness."
For example, the top two global brands last year, Nokia Corp of Finland and Motorola Inc of the US, sold almost US$500 million per handset platform, or major category of phone, he said.
South Korea's top players, Samsung and LG Electronics Inc, meanwhile, sold about US$100 million per platform.
Lidow said that South Korean companies had enjoyed a "remarkable" global emergence beginning in the late 1990s based on "strong investment and also operational efficiency."
What they need now, he said, was more innovation.
"To reverse this trend will require a strong dialogue between government and industry ... with a focus on how to create an environment of investment in riskier ideas across a broad spectrum of product areas," he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last