
Europe
: LG Electronics has established its European R&D center in Paris,
France to expand its GSM and WCDMA mobile phone market. The European
market is considered crucial to meet the company's goal of entering
the global handset industry's 'global top 3' by 2006.
On December
6, Mr. James Kim, President for European Headquarters at LG Electronics,
attended the opening of R&D center in Villepinte, Paris.
The newly-established
R&D center will enable the company to develop the most sophisticated
multi-media feature phones in the most competitive mobile phone market
and to positively accommodate diverse market and customer needs in
Europe. In addition, LG Electronics will be able to strengthen its
relationship with European service providers such as Vodafone, Hutchison,
T-Mobile, Orange and other regional operators by establishing an R&D
base in the region. Likewise, the company can positively meet specific
market needs as well as development of 3G and 4G next-generation mobile
phones.
In particular,
operating in Paris are organizations such as ETSI (European Telecommunications
Standards Institute) and 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project)
that oversee technological standards of 2-G and next-generation mobile
telecommunication services. As such, the location is ideal for companies
to conduct mobile telecommunication standards-related works.
President
Moon-Hwa Park of Telecommunication Equipment & Handset Company
at LG Electronics said, "the establishment of the European R&D
Center, together with the expansion of mobile phone production bases
in India, Brazil and other areas, has strengthened our global R&D
system that can ensure LGE's localization business strategy."
Currently,
LG Electronics operates R&D centers in San Diego, Beijing, Bangalore,
and Moscow. The opening of R&D center in Paris has strengthened
LGE's global R&D presence in penetrating the global mobile phone
market.
James
Kim, President for European Headquarters, added, "the establishment
of R&D center in Europe has created an environment in which we
can efficiently respond to R&D issues in the region. We will position
our research center as the R&D hub penetrating European mobile
phone market by increasing the number of researchers by more than
100-plus people next year.
Meanwhile,
LG Electronics is continuing its efforts to secure superior human
resources pool. The company will recruit more than 30% of its researchers
outside Korea and secure a total of over 5,000 mobile handset R&D
manpower by 2006.