IBM sets up mobile computing lab in Korea

Big Blue announced last week that the lab will be set up by December 2003, with an investment from Korea's Institute of Information Technology Assessment.

Together, IBM and the government will invest roughly $16 million over four years. IBM Korea is making the initial investment by securing the 2,600-square-meter site for the lab.

The facility will research the emerging field of dashboard-embedded communication, called telematics, as well as embedded software and related technologies.

Lee Ho-soo, the lab's chief, said that Korea's strong mobile infrastructure will help the team look into open-standards-based Web portals for telematics users.

He said the lab will have 70 employees, including 25 scientists from IBM Korea and 10 from IBM's Watson Research Center in the United States. "We will increase the size to over a hundred," Hoo-soo said.

According to Minister for Information and Communication Chin Dae-je, "Successful research should eventually add value of 12 to 15 times the cost. The Korean government will give full support to make it happen."

The lab is the result of efforts the South Korean government has made to attract R&D facilities.

Intel in August announced that it would set up a Korean research center for digital home technology and wireless communications by the end of the year. The IBM Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory is the second lab set up under the scheme.

Ubiquitous computing is a scenario for future computing in which computers are so common that they fade into the background and provide intelligence in almost all aspects of daily life.

CNET Korea's Yong-Young Kim reported from Seoul