Here is the latest in the continuing smartphone wars:
South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. is gearing up to unveiled its all new flagship smartphone at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, hoping to put the company back in the ring with arch-rival Apple Inc., corporate sources said Sunday.
The flagship, widely expected to be called the Galaxy 6, aims to lay the foundation for Samsung to recapture the No. 1 smartphone manufacturer title that it lost late last year following lackluster sales of its Galaxy S5 and strong sales of Apple’s first large-screen iPhone 6.
The launch is expected to take place at 2:30 a.m. on Monday (Korea time) at a dedicated “Unpacked” event.
Samsung is also hoping that the new smartphone may help it outpace Chinese upstarts, such as Xiaomi Tech and Huawei Technologies Co, which have made strides, particularly in the world’s second-largest economy.
The combination of Apple’s super popular iPhone and challenges by Xiaomi and Huawei caused Samsung to suffer an “earnings shock” last year.
Company sources said that the new Galaxy, which was called “Project Zero” in its development stage, emphasizes a completely new form factor with importance placed on the materials used to make the phone.
In the past, Samsung’s flagships have taken a beating for using “flimsy” plastic, but the company in more recent months has been churning out devices with metal frames, such as the Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Alpha, or with all aluminum uni-body designs in the cases of the A3, A5 and A7.
Besides the build quality, Samsung said through official teasers that the new phone will have better internals in the form of a more powerful processor, memory capacity, camera and streamlined software, which will enhance the overall performance and user experience.
The new Galaxy, which could well come in the conventional flat and dual-curbed screen “Edge” variants, will have a Samsung Pay system pre-installed. The system based on LooPay technology allows users to use the phone like a credit card. Unlike Apple’s payment system that requires special terminals, the LooPay arrangement allows it to work with existing credit card readers. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it is going to be interesting to see if consumers prefer the old credit car technology that Samsung is banking on or the built in Apple Pay technology in the iPhone?
South Korea is really a housing bubble burst away from a major recession considering all the debt that people have tied up in their homes:
Record high household debt, including credit cards, edged closer to 1,090 trillion won ($994.3 billion) in December largely due to the central bank’s cut in the benchmark interest rate.
The Bank of Korea reported on Thursday that household debt at the end of December was 1,089 trillion won, a 2.8 percent increase from the previous record of 1,059.2 trillion won in the third quarter of 2014. When compared to the end of 2013, household debt expanded 6.6 percent from 1,021.4 trillion won.
Overall household debt has set records for seven consecutive quarters.(………………)
“The household debt to disposable income ratio, which is an indicator of households’ debt burden, at the end of 2013 was 160.7 percent, which is relatively high compared to major advanced economies, including the United States,” said Kim Yong-beom, director general of the financial policy bureau at the Financial Services Commission. “But the financial debt to financial asset ratio is holding steady at 46 percent. The government has been making persistent efforts to reform the structure of mortgage loans.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It looks like Samsung is developing their answer to Apple Pay:
South Korea’s tech giant Samsung Electronics Co. said Thursday that it has bought U.S. mobile technology firm LoopPay Inc., a move apparently aimed at making inroads into the mobile payment technology market against its rival Apple Inc.
“Samsung has made efforts to provide safe and convenient mobile payment service,” said Shin Jong-kyun who heads the mobile division at the Seoul-based company. “The acquisition will spur up the company to lead the world mobile commerce market.”
LoopPay has patent rights related to magnetic secure transmission, a payments solution that works with the existing magnetic stripe readers. [Yonhap]
If you go to a Duty Free shop in Seoul the chances are the employee is an ethnic Korean from China:
After graduating from college five years ago, Lee Ju-yeon came to Korea from China to live with her mother, a waitress, and father, a manual laborer.
They are Chinese citizens, but ethnically Korean, part of what is known in China as the Chaoxian ethnic minority.
They struggled here as minorities, and Lee’s parents never had the chance to earn college diplomas. She knew she wanted to do better, and capitalized on her higher education and bilingual ability.
“One day, my friend working at a duty-free shop sent me a job notice over the phone and suggested I apply to work as a salesperson,” said Lee, who requested that her real name not be used. “I applied for five positions at duty-free stores, and all of them asked for interviews.”
Her job put Lee among countless Korean-Chinese workers who, once concentrated in the labor and food service sectors, have emerged in multitudes in the retail sector.
Many work in small stores – most commonly duty-free shops – where Chinese-speaking employees are in high demand due to their ability to cater to the needs the throngs of Chinese tourists, known as Youke in Korea which means a “tourist” in Chinese.
“In our duty free stores in downtown Seoul, 70 percent of the customers are Chinese,” said a representative for Lotte Duty Free. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It is going to be interesting to see if this law gets passed:
In this Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2014 photo, Cho Hyun-ah, center, former vice president of Korean Air Lines, is escorted by court officials as she leaves for Seoul Western District Prosecutors Office at the Seoul Western District Court Office in Seoul, South Korea. A Seoul court is expected to decide Tuesday whether to issue an arrest warrant for Cho, who resigned as vice president at the airline earlier this month amid mounting public criticism over the incident that she forced a flight to return over a bag of macadamia nuts and a current executive for attempts to cover up the “nut rage” case. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)
Resentment has mounted so much in South Korea against what has come to be known as “gabjil”, high-handedness by the rich and powerful, that parliamentarians are proposing legislation to punish some of the worst abuses.
A bill to be presented in the national assembly this month is formally called the “Conglomerates Ethical Management Special Law” but has been nick-named the Cho Hyun-ah law.
Cho, also known as Heather Cho, is the daughter of the chairman of Korean Air Lines and was sentenced last week to a year in prison for an outburst on a Korean Air plane while on the ground in New York. It was considered a severe sentence by some legal experts.
The bill proposes to ban members of the powerful business families known as chaebol from working at their companies for at least five years if convicted of a crime. In earlier cases, some high-profile offenders were pardoned, serving little or no jail time, although recently-convicted chaebol executives have found it harder to avoid prison. [Reuters]
You can read more at the link, but I wonder if it is even Constitutional in Korea to make special laws that focus on particular individual families?
Part of the Samsung Smarttv EULA: “Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition.”
This is part of their speech-recognition tech, which uses third parties (whose privacy policies Samsung doesn’t make any representations about) to turn your words into text. [Boing Boing]
It seems that McDonald’s workers in South Korea are also motivated to get themselves replaced by machines:
The leader of protests against McDonald’s “culture of exploitation” of young part-time workers vowed Monday to continue fighting until the firm corrects its practices.
“If the company doesn’t respond to our demands, we will continue to raise our voice on the streets,” Lee Hae-jung, secretary general of the Arbeit Workers Union (AWU), told The Korea Times. “After our protest on Friday, we are waiting for a response from McDonald’s. Another protest will be held.”
A group of part-time workers occupied a McDonald’s outlet in Shinchon, near Yonsei University, Saturday, to demand “higher wages, fair working conditions and union activities within the company.”
“We have received many favorable reactions since then, especially from those who work at other fast-food restaurants,” Lee said. “Many showed empathy when we said it is unfair that most of employees at one of the world’s biggest companies eke out a living on minimum wage.” [Korea Times]
In response, McDonald’s said it did not break any laws in hiring and managing its employees.
“What the union is saying is a complete distortion. McDonald’s clearly abides by the Labor Law,” the company said.
In December, the U.S. National Labor Relations Board’s Office of the General Counsel also filed complaints against McDonald’s, accusing it of labor violations.
Complaints were filed in 78 cases, claiming that McDonald’s workers in the U.S. were fired or intimidated for participating in union organizing and in a national protest movement calling for higher wages.
Most McDonald’s workers in Korea earn a minimum hourly wage of 5,580 won ($5.10). Meanwhile, the company had a profit of $5.5 billion on sales of $27.5 billion in 2012.
The AWU wants a wage increase to 10,000 won an hour. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I have already seen some restaurants experimenting with touch screen ordering. How hard would it be for McDonald’s to put up touch screens for customers to order from and then a worker brings the food out to them?
Homeplus Co., the South Korean unit of British retail giant Tesco PLC, has been indicted on charges of illegally selling customer data to insurance firms in exchange for money, a government investigation team said Sunday.
Homeplus is accused of gathering more than 24 million pieces of customer data, including birth dates, number of children and other personal information, and selling them to a number of insurance firms for a total of 23.17 billion won (US$21.14 million), the investigation team said. Most of the information were collected under the guise of conducting a lottery for free gifts.
Homeplus chief Do Sung-hwan, five other former and current company executives and staff, and two officials from the insurance companies have also been indicted over their involvement in the case, according to the team.
Do and the other Homeplus staff are accused of requiring customers to submit personal information in order to enter draws for the gifts.
Most customers who entered the draws were unaware that their personal information would be sold to insurance companies as such details were provided in barely visible print on the coupons. Some of the customers were not even contacted upon winning a prize, the investigation team said. [Yonhap]
Isn’t this though pretty much what Facebook does every day?
Here is an interesting article from Bloomberg that explains why the Korean media does not actively investigate chaebol and when major incidents do happen they are quick to forget about them:
Cho Hyun-ah, Korean Air’s vice president responsible for cabin service, and the oldest child of Korean Air chairman Cho Yang-ho, answers question in Incheon, South Korea in September 2014. Yonhap/AP
It’s the rare scandal that links air rage, corruption and the fate of the world’s 14th biggest economy. The Cho Hyun-ah kerfuffle dominating South Korean news media offers all this and perhaps more: a chance to right a political system that’s veered off course.
The news media pounced on the delicious tale of Cho’s freakout, on a Dec. 5 New York-to-Seoul flight, over the manner in which she was served her macadamia nuts. Cho figured her status as daughter of Korean Air’s chairman entitled her to demand that Flight 86 return to the gate to toss off a crew member who didn’t pay her sufficient homage. The 40-year-old has since been indicted for obstructing aviation safety (she’s also being investigated for colluding with transportation officials).
News commentators are now slamming the sense of privilege felt by families running Korea’s corporate giants, or chaebol. Indeed, Cho’s tantrum demonstrated, in a nutshell, how nepotism and clubby ties between government and industry hold back the economy.
But why did it take Cho’s nut-rage to get reporters on the case? Something similar happened last April with the sinking of the Sewol, in which more than 300 people (most of them school kids) died. The ferry was operated by chaebol Chonghaejin Marine, a fact that was harnessed to explore how cronyism and the revolving-door between regulators, bureaucrats and the private sector put lives at risk. This fit a disturbing pattern. When a spectacular incident makes global headlines, journalists feel compelled to investigate Korea’s chaebol problem. When the dust settles, they move on. Rather than respond only to periodic public outrage, journalists should keep a steady watch on the issue.
Two years ago, Park Geun-hye rode a wave of discontent into South Korea’s presidential Blue House. Many blame the widening gap between rich and poor on the dominance of the chaebol, with their unseemly penchant for tax-evasion, sibling battles over assets and extreme concentration of national wealth. Just five companies generate roughly two-thirds of South Korea’s gross domestic product. This outsized influence stifles small-and- medium-size companies. It kills any chance a startup might have to introduce game-changing products and create new jobs. Park’s plan to rein in the chaebol is off to a slow start, and media elites share in the blame.
The chaebol are major advertisers with deep pockets and, like Japan’s vast power industry or America’s military- industrial complex, they are adept at using their brawn to muzzle criticism. In his explosive 2010 book “Think Samsung,” that company’s former in-house counsel Kim Yong-chul detailed how family-owned conglomerates allegedly used bribes and intimidation to “lord over” the government and the media. Kim says that when he first approached local news outlets with the story, he found no takers. [Bloomberg]
You can read the rest at the link, but I think with the rise of alternative media it is getting harder for the chaebol to cover up their transgressions. With that said I would be surprised to see anything change anytime soon.
