Korean gadgets deemed ‘cool’

Korean information and technology products have once again proven their competitiveness in the global market, International Data Group Korea said yesterday. IDG, which is based in Boston and has branches in 170 countries, announces the coolest gadgets every month in its monthly magazine, Computerworld. In its most recent issue, five out of nine IT products it picked as “April’s coolest gadgets” were from Korean companies, including Samsung Electronics and Pantech & Curitel Communications. Among those products were Samsung Electronics’ SGH-i300 mobile phone, which has a hard-disk drive. IDG also picked Samsung Electronics’ SCH-B200, which could service satellite digital multimedia broadband, and SPH-M4300, a smart phone equipped with a wireless Local Area Network to provide Internet access. Pantech & Curitel’s PH-L4000V, a mobile phone with a camcorder, was another winner. Smaller companies’ offerings were chosen as well, like Ezmax’s MP3 mobile phone with VoIP, or Voice over IP, technology, which allows users to make phone calls through broadband Internet. IDG noted that Samsung Electronics’ phone has high-quality multimedia functions and Pantech & Curitel’s phone was an innovative product that could zoom in as much as the average camcorder and could film 15 frames per second. IDG said the competition in Korea’s mobile phone market was extremely ferocious even though the Korean government, unlike Japan’s, does not provide financial subsidies to telecommunication companies. IDG said Korean companies, such as Reigncom, were the first to commercialize MP3 players so they have a large influence on the MP3 market. Other non-Korean information technology products that were chosen as coolest gadgets this month include Sony’s Walkman and Panasonic’s MP3 player. by Lee Ho-jeong, Chang Chung-hoon