Samsung Electronics transfers 126 technologies to 99 smaller firms

Samsung Electronics transferred 126 of its technologies free of charge to 99 small and medium-sized companies this year, the industry ministry said Monday.

About 80 representatives of recipient companies attended the event at the L Tower in Yangjae-dong, southern Seoul, along with Yun Seong-hwan, a managing director who heads the application team at Samsung's IP Center. The companies chose from 202 mobile, display and home appliance technologies, with mobile technologies accounting for the largest share of the transfers this year.

Cumulatively, Samsung has provided 7,210 technologies through the program and has handed 1,461 of them to 871 smaller companies at no cost, the ministry said. Samsung has taken part every year since 2015.

The technology that drew the most interest was a method for controlling multiple internet-connected devices from a mobile phone at a specific location. Other offerings included a system in which a traveling robot stores route data on a server and shares it with other robots, a voice-processing method that compares on-screen text with spoken input and runs a corresponding function, a shared-task method that distributes work to relevant staff and records the results, and a keyword-search method that opens a location-related social media service when a message mentions a place.

"We will continue to support technology sharing so that it can provide excellent technologies needed for the innovative growth of small and medium-sized enterprises and serve as an opportunity to build a win-win innovation ecosystem," the ministry said.