SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — A top executive of Kakao Corp. stepped down Wednesday to take responsibility for the recent disruption of the company’s mobile messenger KakaoTalk and other related services. “As a CEO of Kakao, I feel miserable and strongly responsible for the incident. So I am stepping down from the post,” Kakao’s [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — The fire that broke out at a data center last weekend has resulted in a plunging number of KakaoTalk users while other chat applications have seen a major inflow of new users, a mobile app tracker said Tuesday. WiseApp Retail Goods conducted a survey of smartphone users over 10 [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — A fire at a data center near Seoul has disrupted services of South Korea’s dominant messenger and internet portal for a day, affecting nearly all sectors of the country, even finance and transportation. The fire broke out at 3:33 p.m. Saturday at the building of SK C&C located in [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 15 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korea’s two major tech giants — Kakao Corp. and Naver Corp. — suffered a service malfunction on Saturday due to a fire at a data center, officials said. The blaze broke out at around 3:33 p.m. at the building of SK C&C located in Pangyo, just south of [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 11 (Korea Bizwire) — Korean-made webtoon services are gaining popularity in Japan. Japan’s MMD Laboratory reported that LINE Manga was most the widely used webtoon app at 41.9 percent as of June, followed by Piccoma at 37.3 percent. LINE Manga is operated by LINE, a Japanese mobile messenger arm of South Korea’s top [...]
SEOUL, Oct. 4 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean internet portal giant Naver Corp. said Tuesday it will take over Poshmark Inc., a U.S. social commerce platform specializing in second-hand apparel trade, for 2.3 trillion won (US$1.6 billion) in a bid to broaden its North American business. According to its filing, Naver has agreed to buy [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 30 (Korea Bizwire) — Twitch, an online streaming platform owned by Amazon.com, announced that it will cut the maximum resolution for its service in South Korea due to rising costs. Twitch issued an official notice on Thursday saying, “Starting from Friday, we will adjust the quality of original video for Korean viewers on [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Electronics Co. and Apple Inc. are focusing on the promotion of smartphones via offline experiential booths as they begin to concentrate on the high-yield premium smartphone market. Samsung has opened up Galaxy Studios at some 60 locations in the country, offering the public a chance to try out [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 29 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday that the number of home electronics devices worldwide connected to its SmartThings platform had exceeded the 10 million milestone as of Sept. 12. SmartThings, released in 2018, is a smart home platform that connects a wide range of Samsung home appliances through Internet of [...]
SEOUL, Sept. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — South Korean mobile carriers SK Telecom Co. and KT Corp. have raised the amount of subsidies for the high-end model of Samsung Electronics Co.’s latest foldable smartphone ahead of next month’s scheduled launch of new iPhone models in the country, according to industry sources Tuesday. SK Telecom, the country’s [...]