LG Increases Investment on Electronics by 20%

LG decided to invest 1.8 trillion won on electronic R&D in the next year increased by 20% compared to this year.

LG Group opened ‘Strategy meeting for Electronic Business’ in LG Production Technology Institute in Pyungtaek-city of Gyeonggi-do at 5th. In the meeting, 40 executives including Ku Bon-mu the chairman of LG Group, Ku Ja-hong the vice-chairman, Kang Yu-sik the team leader of Group Restructure, Paek Woo-hyun CTO of LG Electronic, and other attended.

In the meeting, LG decided to invest 75% of total amount (1.35 trillion won) on decisive items such as digital television, PDP, LCD, organic EL, mobile phone, digital appliance, optical storage, digital AV, etc.

Decisive items mean the items to be developed as top brand in the world, and main items mean the items to be maintained present competitiveness as top products.

LG has a target to achieve top rank for digital television by year 2006, PDP and for LCD by year 2005 by intensive investment. Organic EL will secure competitiveness in price and quality by year 2006 mobile will be top 3, and in many of organic El products LG will achieve top rank by 2010.

In case of mobile phone, it will focus on developing the third generation phone serving wireless Internet, m-commerce, game, etc.

Additionally, LG will increase the number of researchers of China R&D Center from 50 at present to 180 by the next year, and develop its own model for China market.

Chung Sang-kuk, Executive of LG restructuring Headquarters mentioned “ In this strategy meeting, LG decided detailed operational strategy and R&D plan to achieve top rank in electronics and will decide investment plan for energy and chemical industry in the end of this year”

Kang-Woon Lee kwoon90@donga.com