This article was published on August 17, 2012

Samsung wins approval to develop $822 million R&D center in Korea


Samsung wins approval to develop $822 million R&D center in Korea

Korean electronic giant Samsung has been given the green light to carry out a $822 million (1 trillion Korean won) project to build a new research and development center in the countryā€™s capital city Seoul, the Korea Herald reports.

News of the all clear to build the software and tech-focused site, which was granted last week, is somewhat ironic given that the company is currently deep into a US court case to ascertain whether its smartphones and tablets infringed upon Appleā€™s design patents.

Samsung has already begun developing the site in Seoul with the aim of completing work on the 330,000-metre-square plot by May 2015, the newspaper reports. The center itself will be ten stories high and house 10,000 employees.

Samsung claims that one quarter of its employees work in R&D. That number amounts to more than 50,000 staff, according to its (somewhat dated) website, and the company has six existing R&D centers in Korea and a further 18 others that are located across nine countries worldwide.

Samsung has been left red-faced by a number of documents thrown up in the Apple trial that question just how much the iPhone influenced its own product. Court evidence has notably included a 138-page report from 2010 which detailed the iPhoneā€™s superiority over the Galaxy S.

Likewise, Samsungā€™s closely guarded sales figures have been aired and US sales of the devices involved in the case add up to 21 million phones and 1.4 million tablets.

Image via Flickr / jfingas

Get the TNW newsletter

Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.

Also tagged with