LG Electronics Opens Mobile Phone R&D Center in Europe

December 9, 2004

LG Electronics announced on December 8 that it 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.