LG Electronics holds 2-day developer conference

SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Yonhap) -- LG Electronics Inc. said Thursday it began a two-day developer conference in Seoul, aimed at encouraging the exchange of technological trends and expertise among its software developers.

At the event, held at LG Science Park in western Seoul, more than 1,000 developers at home and abroad shared ideas and thoughts on six areas -- artificial intelligence/big data, mobility/automotive, platform/architecture, software technology/development culture, cloud and emerging technology, LG said.

The keynote speeches were made by Bae Kyung-hoon, director of the LG AI Research Institute, on the company's ultra-large multimodal AI solution, EXAONE 2.0, which the company unveiled in July.

Bae was followed by James Gosling, a distinguished engineer at Amazon Web Services, best known as the founder and lead designer of the Java programming language, who shared with the audience his "extensive career in software development," LG said.

The annual event, which started in 2016, 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, digitalization and electrification of traditional home gadgets and automobiles.

In July, LG said it will put more focus and resources into non-hardware products, such as the smart home business; webOS, LG's own smart TV operating system; and business-to-business solutions, including electric vehicle (EV) parts business, as well as new growth areas like health care and robots.

LG planned to raise the proportion of the three sectors -- non-hardware products, B2B solutions and new growth areas -- up to 50 percent of its business portfolio by 2030 and invest more than 50 trillion won (US$37.6 billion) to reach that goal, including 25 trillion won in research and development and 17 trillion won in infrastructure.

In the past few years, LG has sought to diversify its business portfolio and been shrewd in making decisive business decisions to stay competitive in the rapidly changing tech environment.

jaeyeon.woo@yna.co.kr
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