south korea

Motorola Mobility to leave South Korea, cut jobs

Motorola Mobility will close "most" of its South Korean operations by 2013, according to a leaked internal memo.

According to the memo (in Korean), the move is part of a continued global restructuring effort by parent company Google, which bought the smartphone maker earlier this year for $12.5 billion. Since then, however, restructuring costs have bumped the overall price close to $13 billion.

The deal was proposed by Google to acquire more than 17,000 patents from Motorola, but the hefty price tag will soon be challenged in court, where the search giant may discover that … Read more

iPhone 5 hits South Korea Friday, and 50+ new lands in December

Apple said today that the iPhone 5 would be available in South Korea on Friday, with more than 50 additional countries getting its marquee smartphone later this month.

As the company has gotten its supply chain issues under control, with ship times in the U.S. dropping dramatically, it is starting to look to expand availability and reach of the iPhone 5.

Apple last week said that the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, and the fourth-generation iPad would hit the China market in December.

As with previous launches, Apple has had a tough go of it this time around in … Read more

Facebook's 'life saving' organ donor tool spreads to Asia

Facebook's recently launched organ donor "life-saving" tool is now expanding to Asia. South Korea and Japan are the newest countries whose residents will be able to register as organ donors and announce their status to the world via the social network.

According to The Next Web, South Korea and Japan have more than 22 million Facebook users combined, which is sure to help with the social network's goal of increasing organ donation. Although Facebook didn't make a formal announcement about the launch of the feature, a company spokesperson confirmed with CNET that it was indeed … Read more

HTC closes South Korea office

Competing against domestic technology giants including Samsung, Taiwanese phone maker HTC has closed its doors in South Korea.

The smartphone maker has long struggled against low handset sales in the Asian country, and has finally bitten the bullet and closed its South Korea office.

According to an official statement, the move has been made in order to "streamline operations" and improve efficiency across the whole company. "This is a hard decision that has direct impact on people who have contributed to the growth HTC has experienced the past several years," the company said in a statement.… Read more

The 404 1,075: Where we had a crush on you in high school (podcast)

Today we're cracking open the Apple Store Employee Guidelines book to reveal some of the tactics that the company uses to implant themselves in the minds of shoppers. A clear example of this psychological influence is the precision angle of every MacBook Pro notebook on display in the store. Take a look next time you're in an Apple store and you'll notice that they're all measured to a very specific incline degree.

At first glance, you might think that it's placed at the optimum viewing angle for passersby, but it's actually angled poorly to encourage customers to adjust the screen to their preferred position! The company hopes that the physical interaction with the device will show the generous viewing options and even encourage customers to explore further.… Read more

Google reveals two international probes

Google said today that both South Korea and Argentina have recently opened probes into its activities, moves that increase the spotlight on the way the search giant collects data and competes with others.

According to The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Google revealed in a quarterly regulatory filing that the two countries are conducting inquiries into "certain business practices" of Google.

A Google spokesperson told the Journal that "Argentina's regulator 'notified us that they are conducting a preliminary inquiry into our search and search advertising services, and we are of course happy to answer their questions.'&… Read more

New iPad hits South Korea, 11 more countries on Friday

Apple said today that its new iPad will hit a dozen new markets, including South Korea, on Friday.

Along with South Korea, the new iPad will be available in Brunei, Croatia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Malaysia, Panama, St Maarten, Uruguay and Venezuela. The following Friday, it will be available in Colombia, Estonia, India, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, South Africa and Thailand.

The new iPad, despite minor upgrades such as a higher-resolution screen and slightly improved processor, has been another success for Apple, which continues to dominate the tablet business. The expansion into 22 new markets over the next … Read more

Korean iOS users are finally in the game

After more than two years of suffering without titles like Angry Birds and Air Penguin, South Korean iOS users are finally getting to join in on the fun.

That's because Apple on Wednesday began including games in its South Korean iOS App Store, a change that came several months after the July decision by the Seoul-based Game Rating Board to relax rules governing violent and sexual content.

Because of those restrictions, both Apple and Google had declined to include games in the Korean versions of their app stores, meaning that owners of iOS and Android devices in that country … Read more

North Korea's army of online game hackers

From the "I guess this makes sense" files, the New York Times reports that North Korea has unleashed a squad of hackers to infiltrate South Korean gaming sites. The two countries have technically been at war for almost 60 years, and cyber-attacks are the modern-day equivalent to a slap in the face.

The police in Seoul said Thursday that four South Koreans and a Korean-Chinese had been arrested on charges of drawing on that army to organize a hacking squad of 30 young video gaming experts.

Working from Northern China, the police said, the squad created software that … Read more