Digital-Lifestyles – Page 228 – Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

Digital-Lifestyles pre-empted and reported thousands of articles on the then-coming impact that technology was to have on all forms of Media. Launched in 2001 as a research blog to aid its founder, Simon Perry, present at IBC 2002, it grew into a wide ranging, multi-author publication that was quoted in many publications globally including the BBC, was described by the Guardian as 'Informative' and also cited in a myriad of tech publications before closing in 2009

T-Mobile Sidekick 3 Announced
T-Mobile has finally officially announced the T-Mobile Sidekick 3, adding a new trackball controller, Bluetooth and EDGE data to the popular Sidekick 2.
The design’s had a bit of a spruce up in the design factory, with sleeker lines and a narrower 131mm x 59mm x 23mm (5.2″ x 2.3″ x .9″) form factor making the device feel more like a phone.
As with earlier incarnations, the new Sidekick sports a spring-assisted, flip out display with a QWERTY keyboard lurking below.
The keyboard has been significantly improved, and now boasts proper individual keys rather than the rubberised cover seen on earlier versions.
The D-pad controller is now accompanied by a new, ergonomically-improved trackball control which replaces the older up/down roller wheel.
The speed and sensitivity of the trackball can be adjusted to suit personal preferences and (we like this bit) the trackball can glow various colours. Cool!
The Sidekick boasts a new 1.3 megapixel camera and assist light, with a large 65k colour, transflective TFT display supporting a rather underwhelming 240×160 pixel resolution.
Sidekick’s new MP3 player lets users create M3U playlists or play music based on artist, album, genres or composers, with a Mini SD card expansion slot providing storage for up to 2GB of tunes and multimedia stuff.
In line with its all singin’ and dancin’ billing, the Sidekick comes with a 64MB Mini SD card in the box, along with a wired headset and USB cable.
Connectivity
With tri band support (850/900/1800MHz), the GSM Sidekick will suit jet setters flitting between the States and Europe, with a talk time of nearly six hours providing ample scope to keep up with the latest gossip.
New for version three is a Bluetooth system supporting both the OBEX Push and Headset/Hands Free profiles and a mini-USB port for transferring files from a PC.
The built in web browser zips along on sites designed for mobiles (thanks to some nifty server side pre-processing and compression), but things slow down considerably when viewing regular sites, with the low res screen soon showing its limitations.
Sidekick 3 users have the option to synchronise their contacts, notes, calendar entries and email via the T-Mobile website, or they can fork out for a copy of Intellisync to synch their device directly with Microsoft Outlook on a Windows PC.
Messaging
The popularity of Sidekick phones has been assisted in no small measure by their excellent messaging abilities, with text messaging, email, and instant messaging (but still no MMS) supported by a built in spellchecker.
New for version 3 is the support for MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger, supplementing the existing AOL Instant Messenger connectivity.
Compulsive chatters can now enjoy up to 10 simultaneous active IM conversations with T-Mobile’s back-end server ensuring that connections and conversations won’t drop if the signal is momentarily lost.
What we think
Although the rather hefty bulk and teen-friendly looks of the Sidekick may not be everyone’s tastes, there’s no denying that it’s a very capable phone supported by some fun features.
There’s not enough functionality to tempt us from our beloved Treo 650, but for the targeted demographic – teens/fashion victims/schlebs etc – the Sidekick looks sure to prove a hit.
Shame about the poor screen though.
Specs:
Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
Display 240 x 160 pixel, 65,000 colour display
Trackball
Bluetooth 1.2 (limited to Hands-Free profile and vCard exchange)
1.3 megapixel digital camera w/LED flash
miniSD memory card slot (supports up to 2GB cards)
64MB of SDRAM/64MB Flash memory
Music player software
Size: 130 x 59 x 21.8mm
Weight: 6.7 ounces
T Mobile
21 June, 2006
Yahoo Messenger Goes Collaborative
Hot on the heels of Windows Messenger Live comes Yahoo’s new upgrade to their own Instant Messaging service, offering plug-ins to let users share more information.
Currently residing in beta, Yahoo! Messenger with Voice (version 8), will let users embed collaborative programs into their Messenger experience.
The Yahoo Messenger update will let users run some software packages simultaneously, so groups of chums can all settle down to watch movies together, or get all interactive on each other’s Yahoo Calendar listings while yakking over the messaging system.
Early reports suggest that the service will also allow up to 1GB for file transfers, with the maximum number of contacts available to punters reaching a dazzlingly popular 1,000.
Widgets and Plug Ins
Yahoo is looking to add competition-crushing extras to their new service by getting third party developers to create mini-applications (or ‘widgets’) to let users do groovy things like combine Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Music, News, Finance, track and share wish lists on Amazon or keep their beady eye on an eBay auction.
With this new ‘plug-in’ approach, Jeff Bonforte, the big cheese in charge of Yahoo’s instant messaging products, reckons that future innovations on Messenger will most likely come from these new widgets rather than complete program upgrades.
Of course, there’s nothing new to all this embedding malarkey, with the industry boys – Microsoft, Google, AOL and Skype – all falling over themselves to make desktop-based applications shareable over IM services, but Yahoo are hoping that by opening up Messenger to become more of a distribution platform they’ll be able to attract punter-luring new services.
Yahoo Messenger is currently number three in the chatty world of Instant Communications, with eBay’s Skype in the second slot and AOL’s AIM still ruling the IM roost.
Yahoo! Messenger
21 June, 2006
Sony Ericsson K610im Adds i-mode
With a full blown parp on their PR trumpets, Sony Ericsson has announced its new Sony Ericsson K610im, their first GSM/UMTS handset to offer full support for i-mode.
What’s i-mode we hear you ask?
Well, it’s a wireless Internet service developed by Japanese provider NTT DoCoMo, which currently operates at 9.6 kbps and offers iMail, iMMS and Web browsing via C-HTML, a subset of HTML.
With Web pages and content specially formulated for i-mode, users can expect nippier viewing of multimedia content using the included NetFront browser.
Although the download speed isn’t exactly impressive right now, the next-gen i-mode looks to be a much sleeker beast, supporting white-knuckle speeds up to 384 kbps.
Back to the phone, the Sony Ericsson K610im features a 1.9″ (176×220) 260k display, a 2 megapixel camera with 2.5x digital zoom and a second VGA camera for video calls.
There’s 16 MB of onboard user memory, with a 64 MB Memory Stick Micro bundled in the box (the phone can support cards up to 1 GB).
Other features include a speakerphone, Bluetooth, USB 2.0, USB charging and a flight mode.
Available in ‘carbon black’ only, the K610im is expected to start shipping in the third quarter of 2006, with pricing to be announced.
K610im specifications
Imaging and messaging
1.9″ QCIF+ (176×220) TFT 260k
2 megapixel camera and VGA Video call
iMail
Push e-mail
2.5 x digital zoom
16 MB user memory (actual depending on operator customization)
Video recording/playback
SMS and iMMS
DoJa stand-by application
Music
Speakerphone
64 MB Memory Stick Micro (M2 (support for up to 1GB)
Media player [MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ support ]
Support MFi & Mobile MP4
Full streaming Audio & Video
DoJa 2.5 OE
i-mode DRM
Polyphonic 72 voices
3D games
OMA DRM v. 1.0
Music DJ, PhotoDJ, VideoDJ
Connectivity
Memory card slot
UMTS 2100 + GPRS 900/1800/1900
Bluetooth™ technology
PC Tools & Software
USB 2.0 Mass storage
USB charging
Fast port system connector
External antenna connector
Flight mode
Access NetFront Web Browser
Kit Content
-64 MB M2
-USB Cable
-PC software
Sony Ericsson
20 June, 2006
Kodak Easyshare P712 Superzoom Digital Camera
With a flurry of clicking and whirring, Kodak have announced their new Easyshare P712 superzoom digital camera, offering a 12x image-stabilised Lens, a 7.1 MP sensor and enough manual modes to please compulsively tinkersome photographers.
The camera sports a veritable animal of a zoom, with the f2.8 – f/3.7, Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens covering a whopping 36 – 432 mm range (35mm equivalent).
With such a long lens, things are likely to get wobbly at the telephone end, so there’s built in optical image stabilisation to help ward off blurificartion.
Faster than the blink of an eye
The boys and girls at Kodak are making bold claims for their new camera, saying that P712’s auto-focus system boasts a ‘best-in-class’ click-to-capture rate – literally faster than the blink of an eye, they say.
We’ve never bothered to work out how fast we blink, but Kodak tell us that their 0.07 seconds capture rate is faster, and who are we to argue?
Made for sharing
The Easyshare comes with a large 2.5-inch, high-resolution, LCD and electronic viewfinder for framing and reviewing pictures, with the Share button making it easy to, err, share pics using Kodak’s, err, Easyshare software which, like Quality Street, was apparently made for sharing.
As is de rigueur with consumer digicams, the camera can record video at a TV-quality, 30 frames-per-second VGA video with sound (MPEG4), with onboard facilities to split, cut, merge and trim footage or create single-frame or multi-frame “storyboard” still pictures.
Flashing it about
As well as the built in flash (guide no. 11, ISO 100 ), there’s a also a hot shoe connector for attaching the optional Kodak P20 zoom flash (which knocks out for around a ton).
Rounding off the feature set is the usual legion of scene, program, aperture/shutter priority and manual shooting modes, a hefty wad of preset scene modes and multiple burst modes for action shooting.
There’s also a live histogram display; 25 selectable AF points; custom white balance with selectable compensation; highlight/shadow clipping displays; and, in line with its semi-pro aspirations, RAW file support.
The P712 camera should be shuffling onto UK shelves around about now, with a suggested retail price of £350 – which, puts it in direct competition with the highly rated and far more versatile Nikon D50 dSLR, which starred in our ‘Best of 2005’ list.
Kodak EasyShare P712 specifications
Sensor 1/2.5 ” Type CCD, 7.1 million effective pixels
Image sizes 3072 x 2304, 3072 x 2048 (3:2), 2592 x 1944, 2048 x 1536, 1280 x 960
Movie clips 640 x 480 @ 30fps, 320 x 240 @ 30fps, QuickTime video, motion JPEG
File formats JPEG (Exif v 2.21), RAW, TIFF
Lens 36 – 432mm equiv, Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens, 12x optical zoom
Image stabilization Yes
Conversion lenses Optional
Digital zoom 5x advanced
Focus Hybrid AF system using TTL contrast detection method and external passive sensor
Focus modes Normal AF, Macro AF, Infinity AF, Manual focus, Multi-zone, Center zone, Selectable zone (25 zones selectable)
AF assist lamp Yes
Focus distance Normal: 50cm – infinity (wide) 1.9m – infinity (tele)
Macro: 10-60cm (wide) 90cm – 2m (tele)
Metering Multi-pattern, Center-weighted, Center spot, Selectable zone (25 zones)
ISO sensitivity Auto, ISO 64/80/100/125/160/200/250/320/400/800
Exposure compensation +/- 2.0 EV, 1/3 EV steps
Exposure bracketing +/- 2.0 EV, 1/3, 2/3, 1.0 EV steps, 3 or 5 images
Shuttter speed 16 – 1/1000 sec in 1/3 step increments
Aperture F2.8 – 3.7
Modes Auto, SCN (scene mode), P (program mode), A (aperture priority mode), S (shutter priority mode), M (manual mode), C (custom mode), video
Scene modes Pportrait, self-portrait, sport, party, landscape, night portrait, night landscape, snow, beach, text/document, flower, sunset, candlelight, backlight, manner/museum, fireworks, panorama White balance Auto, daylight, cloudy, open shade, sunset, tungsten, fluorescent, click WB, custom
White balance fine tune Blue/red bias and magenta/green bias, ±7 stops
Self timer 2 / 10 secs, 2 shot option
Continuous shooting First burst (approx. 1.6 fps up to 14 frames at standard JPEG), Last burst (approx. 1.6 fps last 5 frames at standard JPEG)
Image parameters High colour, natural colour, low colour, sepia, black and white, Contrast (3 levels), Sharpness (3 levels)
Flash Guide no. 11 (ISO 100)
Range: wide – 0.9-4.7 m (2.9′-15.4′), tele – 2.0-3.6 m (6.6′-11.8′)
Modes: auto, fill, red-eye, slow sync (front, front-red-eye, rear), off
Compensation: ±1.0 EV with 1/3 EV steps
Viewfinder Electronic, 237 K pixels with diopter adjustment
LCD monitor 6.35 cm (2.5″) indoor/outdoor colour TFT display with adjustable brightness setting
Connectivity A/V output (NTSC or PAL, user-selectable)
Storage SD/MMC card (none supplied), 32MB internal memory
Weight (no batt) 403g
Dimensions 108 x 84.2 x 72 mm (4.3″ x 3.3″ x 2.8″)
Kodak
20 June, 2006
Nokia 6080 Mobile Phone Announced
Slipping and slithering down the well oiled product slipway at Nokia is their latest swishy tri-band phone, the Nokia 6080 (no relation to their 1997 phone of the same name!).
Primarily targeted at Asian consumers, Nokia 6080 is a fairly bland, all-black looking affair with garish silver/gold highlights and a user interface akin to the popular Nokia Series 40 series.
There’s the usual raft of well-tuned Nokia features onboard, including a camera, Bluetooth, MP3 player, video recorder, FM Radio and MP3 ring tones.
Sporting a backlit keypad and bright colour display, the handset comes bundled with a stereo headset and offers all the usual customisation options (with wallpapers, themes, annoying ring tones etc) to keep da kidz happy.
There’s also an exclusive Sodoku game designed specially for the 6080 included if that’s how you like to waste away the hours.
Apart from the trusty phone functions, the Nokia 6080 also comes with Nokia’s Xpress audio messaging, email capabilities and a push to talk feature, with EDGE connectivity and an onboard XHTML browser for nippy browsing on the move.
Talk time is a distinctively average 3.5 hours with a standby time of up to 12 days.
The phone is expected to emerge around the fourth quarter of 2006 for about 180 Euros.
Nokia
20 June, 2006
The Siemens-Nokia Deal Examined
In the wake of the dot com boom, then the dot com collapse, equipment vendors have been feeling the fall-out and mergers seem to be the way to reconcile the collapsing markets. The Nokia-Siemens merger announcement bears witness to this.
Though the telecoms market is still expanding, increased competition from new entrants has made life very difficult for incumbent players.
The Siemens/Nokia merger is just the latest in what’s likely to be a continuing trend, both for vendors and telecoms companies.
Nokia brings expertise in the mobile space (they previously pulled out fixed markets), while Siemens has experience in the wired and broadband markets. Though there will be some overlaps, both companies mainly concentrate in non-competing spaces and as such, they should be able to move forwards with the best of both companies to offer a strong solution for next generation networks.
Siemens, a German giant
Even after disposing of their mobile arms (BenQ have already taken up the mobile phone division), Siemens is still a huge force in the world market, with over 600,000 employees. They have just disposed of parts of the companies in markets they’re not competing well in.
The BenQ buy-out of the mobile division of Siemens allows BenQ to sell phones under the Siemens brand for 18 months, and then under a joint BenQ/Siemens brand for a further 5 years, though BenQ may well drop the Siemens brand altogether. However, they are able to utilise Siemens’ retails channels and will actually based out of the Siemens mobile division in Munich.
This turns BenQ from a small phone player, to one of the larger ones. Siemens have always been good at making phone innards (radios), but their designs have been dated. BenQ must be hoping to imitate the Sony/Ericsson partnership where Ericsson made good phones that weren’t stylish, while Sony had the ergonomics, but dire insides.
Watch out for the Chinese
Though the west is merging like mad (most recently Lucent and Alcatel, both previously giants in the telecoms world) the real threat is coming from China.
Companies such as Huawei (“wu why” sometimes pronounced “who are we” which fits their appearance into markets that they had no presence in until recently) are starting to make serious dents into the Tier 1 telecoms/ISP markets.
A couple of years ago, no one had heard of them. They initially attacked the core ISP market with Internet routers, and offered Cisco “clone” hardware. While Cisco might sell you a system, then you add the software and then all the extra features, Huawei offered a system with everything on in the first place for 60% of the Cisco base price. Not surprisingly in an extremely competitive market, ISPs started utilising Huawei equipment. Huawei also have a huge development resource of 10’s of thousands of high class engineers out of Chinese universities. Where Cisco might take weeks to analyse and diagnose a problem, Huawei set of team of people on the problem and can release fixes in hours.
Now they’ve established themselves in the ISP market, the surrounding markets are being worked on (and since most ISPs are now owned by telecoms companies, it’s the telecoms markets that are easiest to move into).
The Chinese can make carrier class equipment much more cost effectively than their western counterparts, which is why they are suffering.
As networks move towards triple and quadruple plays (voice, video, Internet or voice, video, Internet and mobile) the equipment vendors now have to compete in all these areas. Triple plays are most common currently, but as can be seen from the likes of players like Orange and NTL (both offering quadruple plays), the market is moving in that direction (Vodafone recently announced they’re moving into fixed/broadband plays).
The combination of Nokia as the mobile infrastructure side of the business and Siemens Communications as the broadband/fixed player should allow them to offer a complete solution to their existing and new customers. If they can get the synergies right, the combined might of both has a good chance of competing and ultimately surviving in this crowded arena.
Only time will tell if they can defend against the power against them.
20 June, 2006
Onkyo CR-D1 Receiver With iPod Dock
New from Onkyo is the CR-D1, a natty mini Hi-Fi CD/FM receiver with options to control docked iPods (volume/stop/start etc) and wirelessly stream music from PCs.
Sharing similar design lines to their CR-505DAB CD Receiver (which impressed us for a bit before going AWOL), the CR-D1 features a beefy 60W x 2 VL Digital amplifier with Wolfson DAC, a FM tuner (but, sadly, no AM or DAB) and a CD player.
iPod dockery
iPod owners can hook up their machines through the optional DS-A1 iPod dock, and then control playback via the CR-D1’s remote control. Conveniently, the docking station will also charge up the iPod during playback.
When it comes to expansion options, this fella’s well stacked, offering 1 x optical, 3 x RCA, and stereo mini-jack inputs and 1 x optical, 2 x RCA, subwoofer, and headphone outputs.
Conveniently, Onkyo have slapped a pair of input/output sockets on the front of the unit, so punters don’t have to do battle with spaghetti cabling at the back whenever they want to hook up another player or record from the line out socket.
Wireless widget
The optional UWL-1 module and USB dongle lets users turn their desktop or laptop PCs into music servers, with sound being delivered via high quality 2.4GHz digital transmission.
If you like the sound of all that wireless action going on, the system will be hitting the shelves of Japan in July 15th for an upmarket price of around $910 (£490).
Specifications
Rated output: 60W + 60W (4 O, JEITA) – amplifier section
Harmonic wave distortion factor: 0.08%
Frequency response: 10Hz – 60kHz/ + 1dB – 3dB (LINE1)
Signal-noise ratio: 100dB (LINE1 and IHF-A)
Tone: ±6dB/80Hz (BASS) and ±8dB/10kHz (TREBLE), + 7dB/80Hz (S.BASS)
CD frequency response: 4Hz- 20kHz
FM reception range: FM76.0 -90.0MHz and VHF 1 and 2, 3ch
Power consumption 80W/ 0.15W standby
Size: Width 205× height 116× depth 335mm
Weight: 4.5kg
Onkyo [Japanese]
19 June, 2006
ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6 Review (85%)
After happily using Zonelabs’ freebie Zonealarm firewall product for years on end, we were keen to try out their commercial Zonealarm Internet Security Suite 6, which bolts on a ton of extras to tempt skinflints.
The £50 suite certainly looks to be great value, serving up an overflowing platter of features including Zone Alarm’s famous firewall, backed by anti-spyware and anti-virus tools, ID and privacy protection, cookie management, email protection, phishing and spam blocking, parental controls for instant messaging and wireless network protection.
The Computer Associates’ anti-virus module has been souped up somewhat, now offering spyware integration, a new pause/continue function for the scanner, and a quarantine management area for any infected files you don’t want blasted off your system.
The suite offers what Zonelabs grandly describes as their Triple Defence Firewall – this claims to protect your machine from outside attack; monitor programs trying to access the Web; and protect your OS with a firewall that keeps a beady eye on the operating system, Registry and file system.
Zone Alarm’s anti-phishing widget has also been enhanced, and the privacy protection feature lets users specify what personal information they want protected, e.g. phone numbers, addresses, bank accounts etc.
Easy as pie
We found the suite dead easy to set up, and there’s a handy animated tutorial to guide you through the settings.
The program sports a simple, unified interface with straightforward ‘high, medium or low’ slider controls for security settings.
Fine tuning and advanced options were also available, but for many users the default settings should be enough to get them up and running within minutes.
Home networking
If you’re running a home network, Zonealarm will automatically detect the connection and prompt you to add it to the trusted or Internet zones, so that you can make sure your files are only shared on your own network and not by lurking hackers.
We found the network wizard pretty straightforward, although perhaps not as idiot-proof as the interface on the rival Norton Personal Firewall software.
SmartDefence
The SmartDefence service provides real-time updates and new attack-protection capabilities, with the price including a year’s worth of automatic updates – as soon as the year’s up, you’ll have to shell out for an upgrade or risk running outdated software.
Although there’s not a great deal new on offer here – save the anti-spyware feature – the Internet Security Suite is a solid product that gives you all the protection you need for a reasonable fifty quid.
Although it’s possible to gather together the same sort of functionality by using freebie products like AVG anti-virus and Ad-aware, if you’re looking for an all-in, tightly integrated fit’n’forget solution, you won’t find much better than Zonealarm’s Internet Security Suite 6.
As we went to press, Zone Alarms announced an update to their Security Suite, adding a new Game Mode which stops pesky security alerts getting in the way of the fragging action and some enhanced anti-spyware tools. More details on version 6.5 can be found here
Features: 85%
Ease of use: 85%
Value For Money: 70%
Overall: 85%
ZoneLabs
19 June, 2006
Nokia Trials Mobile TV With TeliaSonera Sweden
Nokia has announced a partnership with TeliaSonera Sweden to trial a complete DVB-H system, using Nokia’s Nordic know-how, their Mobile Broadcast System 3.0 and Nokia N92 mobile TV devices.
Currently being wired up by teams of studious, white-coated boffins at the Nokia facility in Kista, Stockholm, the system will be hosted and managed by the Nokia team and will allow TeliaSonera Sweden to serve up a veritable feast of mobile television.
The test system is set to debut over Gothenburg and Stockholm from early August until the end of the year.
“Nokia is very pleased to be working so closely with TeliaSonera Sweden in this new area of DVB-H based mobile TV. We believe strongly in the capability of this technology as well as in the mobile TV service, and we are looking forward to verify the full potential of mobile TV together with TeliaSonera Sweden,” purred Jan Lindgren, Vice President, Networks, Nokia.
Anders Bruse, Senior VP, Products and Services at TeliaSonera, joined in the PR love-in, adding that the DVB-H technology trial should “give them a better understanding of their customers’ expectations.”
About the technology
DVB-H lets punters on the move download high quality terrestrial digital broadcasts on their mobiles, and also offers tempting business opportunities for mobile service providers, content and broadcast companies, infrastructure and handset manufacturers.
Feedback from several mobile TV pilots has proved promising, with a trial last year in Oxford, England finding that 83% of the pilot participants were chuffed with the service provided.
Nokia
19 June, 2006
LG Aims To Double World’s Top Products by 2010
LG Electronics has rolled up its beefy sleeves, raised its fists and shouted, “Come oooonnn!!!! Let’s be ‘aving you!” to the electronics world, declaring its intent to more than double its share of the world’s top products by 2010.
LG vice president Chun Myung-wo gave his best Clint Eastwood squint and socked it to his competitors, “Currently, we have five of the world’s top products. We plan to increase that number to a double-digit figure by 2010 through continuous efforts and innovation.”
With a direct hit on the spittoon, he continued, “By substantially increasing the number of flagship goods through our technological prowess, we aim to evolve into a bona fide powerhouse.’
The electronics sharp-shooter currently hogs the highest global market share of items such as domestic aircon units, optical storage, home theatres, DVD players and code division multiple access (CDMA) handsets, but it wants more. Much more.
Pointing aggressively, Myung-wo says he wants the global market for plasma display panel (PDP) modules, PDP TVs, liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs, side-by-side refrigerators, built-in air conditioners and drum washers to be pwned by LG.
Rags to riches
The Korean company has seen a remarkable turnaround of its fortunes over the last decade.
Ten years ago, LG was nothing more than a big fish in a small domestic market, managing only a limited global presence.
A policy of rapid expansion and smarty-pants innovation resulted in LG grabbing the numero uno slot for optical storage in 1998, a position it continues to hold.
Similarly, when it comes to domestic air conditioners, LG rules the roost, and the company is now wrestling for the crown of King of Flat-Panel Displays, knocking out 730,000 plasma units last year to nudge past market leaders Samsung SDI.
“We think that our technical edge will help us win out in the global competition in flat panel display and in other fields both locally and globally,” Chun said, pointing out that the company manufacture the world’s biggest TV set and the smallest one.
LG homepage
19 June, 2006