Park Hyoung-sei, president of LG Electronics’ home entertainment division, speaks at the webOS Partner Summit held at LG Science Park in western Seoul on Sept. 19, 2023, in this photo provided by the company. (Image courtesy of Yonhap News)
SEOUL, Sept. 19 (Korea Bizwire) — LG Electronics Inc. said Tuesday it held a global conference aimed at enhancing its smart TV content and platform business.
The South Korean tech company said some 300 content developers and business partners from 30 countries attended the webOS Partner Summit, held at LG Science Park in western Seoul, to extend the ecosystem and values of webOS, LG’s own smart TV operating system.
LG is “seeking to make a paradigm shift” away from a hardware maker to “a media and entertainment platform company that offers differentiated content and services so that consumers can live a better life,” Park Hyoung-sei, president of LG Electronics’ home entertainment division, said at the event.
LG planned to increase the number of web-OS operated smart TVs, currently some 200 million units worldwide, to 300 million by 2026, by providing the operating system to other smart TV brands and a variety of form factors, such as projectors, monitors, electric billboards and automobile displays.
LG said it planned to make a 1 trillion won (US$756 million) investment over the next five years in producing webOS content and make the system more user-friendly.
More than 300 TV brands have adopted LG’s webOS since the South Korean tech firm began supplying the operating system to other TV manufacturers in 2021, LG said.
The event came as the South Korean consumer electronics giant was gearing up to become a “smart life solutions provider” beyond the traditional home appliance maker, citing the growing importance of customer services, digitalization and electrification of traditional home gadgets and automobiles.
In July, LG said it will put more focus and resources into non-hardware products, business-to-business solutions and new growth areas, like health care and robots.
LG aimed to raise the proportion of the three sectors up to 50 percent of its business portfolio by 2030 and invest more than 50 trillion won to reach that goal, including 25 trillion won in research and development and 17 trillion won in infrastructure.
Last week, LG hosted an annual software developer conference, aimed at encouraging the exchange of technological trends and expertise among its software developers.
In the past few years, LG has sought to diversify its business portfolio and been shrewd in making decisive business decisions to stay competitive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
(Yonhap)
