ANN/THE KOREA HERALD – LG Electronics Inc announced it is hosting a global conference to strengthen its smart TV content and platform business.
The South Korean technology firm reported yesterday that the event, known as the webOS Partner Summit, welcomed around 300 content developers and business partners from 30 countries. The summit at LG Science Park in western Seoul, focused on expanding the ecosystem and enhancing the values associated with webOS, LG’s proprietary smart TV operating system.
President of LG Electronics’ home entertainment division Park Hyoung-sei said LG’s aspiration is to undergo a significant transformation.
“LG aims to transition from being primarily a hardware manufacturer to evolving into a media and entertainment platform company that provides unique content and services to enhance consumers’ quality of life.”
LG plans to increase the number of web-OS operated smart TVs, currently some 200 million units worldwide, to 300 million by 2026, by providing the operating system to other smart TV brands and a variety of form factors, such as projectors, monitors, electric billboards and automobile displays. LG said it planned to make a KRW1 trillion (USD756 million) investment over the next five years in producing webOS content and make the system more user-friendly.
More than 300 TV brands have adopted LG’s webOS since the South Korean tech firm began supplying the operating system to other TV manufacturers in 2021, LG said.
The event came as the South Korean consumer electronics giant was gearing up to become a “smart life solutions provider” beyond the traditional home appliance maker, citing the growing importance of customer services, digitalisation and electrification of traditional home gadgets and automobiles.
In July, LG said it will focus more and increase resources into non-hardware products, business-to-business solutions and new growth areas, like health care and robots.
LG aims to raise the proportion of the three sectors up to 50 per cent of its business portfolio by 2030 and invest more than KRW50 trillion to reach that goal, including KRW25 trillion in research and development and KRW17 trillion in infrastructure.
