Berlin-based Internet startup incubator Team Europe is expanding to Asia with the establishment of a “market-watch” office in Seoul, South Korea.

It will be headed by German-Korean Ludolf Ebner-Chung, a former McKinsey consultant, with Team Europe partner Markus Fuhrmann overseeing the venture.

The idea is for Team Europe to use the new office as a launchpad to expand its activities across multiple Asian regions. So why Korea first?

Furhmann asserts that Korea has a huge Internet and smartphone environment, and that there are big opportunities for Team Europe to build successful Internet companies in the region. “It feels like Berlin a few years ago,” he says.

Fuhrmann already started several companies in China before joining Lukasz Gadowski, Kolja Hebenstreit and Steffen Höllinger at Team Europe as a partner in 2009. The firm’s portfolio includes companies like Delivery Hero, HitFox, Mister Spex and Madvertise.

Question is: do they need to change their name now?

International-focused TV and video site Viki has made a significant move into the music space, after it announced deals with a number of record labels and agencies, most notably Warner Music, SEED Music Group of Taiwan and Korea’s LOEN.

The expansion has brought thousands of music videos from hundreds of artists to the video site, Viki says, building on its existing selection of TV shows and videos that cater for worldwide audiences.

The new selection features an eclectic bunch of artists, ranging from international pop and rock stars to K-Pop figures and rappers, including Green Day, Simple Plan Drunken Tiger and Brown Eyed Girls.

Given the international scope, the company will turn to its active community of fans to ‘crowdsource’ translations of the lyrics — as it does with its videos — to break the language barrier for other users, which currently number 20 million monthly visitors.

The first music content will be available in the US, Canada, Europe and several significant countries across Asia, where its Singapore-based CEO Razmig Hovaghimian is domiciled.

A phased rollout will see the music selection brought to other countries and regions worldwide.

Currently, North America is responsible for 40 percent of the service’s traffic, while Europe accounts for around 15 percent and Southeast Asia — a particular hotspot for Korea content, as is France, curiously – makes up 30 percent of its active users.

The rest of its userbase is spread across other markets, such as The Middle East and Latin America.The move is a natural one Hovaghimian told The Next Web, particularly for its video content from Korea, where a number of popstars are successful actors and feature in many of Viki’s back catalogue of video content already.

For the music labels, partnering with Viki provides an opportunity to extend their reach and monetisation into these global markets, with the subtitling a particularly effective method to increase the connection with fans in emerging markets where English isn’t widely spoken.

Stephen Bryan of Warner Music Group paid tribute to the Viki platform and the opportunity it will present the label and its artists:

Viki will help both global superstars and local talent to forge deeper connections with audiences that don’t speak their language. At the same time, it offers fans a new way to champion their favourite acts and contribute to their success.

Earlier this week, we looked at how the K-Pop industry is using the Internet, and in particular social media, to grow its worldwide audience, and the addition of Viki will help LOEN expand its online footprint.

Won-Su Shin, CEO of the Korean label, spoke of the new of reach that Viki will provide:

Through the alliance with Viki, we’ve established a foothold for spreading K-Pop throughout the world. We anticipate that many users can now share their favourite music more conveniently and that global competitiveness of Korean music will be strengthened.

The news is particularly significant for Asia and other emerging markets where Spotify, Pandora, Deezer and others are yet to open their services.

The initial pool of artists does not address this void instantly but, with Warner Music in particular on board, the move is a significant step and it again shows that Viki is focused on exploring untapped international markets.

Viki’s most recent round of funding — its second to date — saw it raise $20 million last year. Its backers include Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Charles River Ventures and Neoteny Labs, which provided a collective $4.3 million in series A funding in 2010.

The company has strong links with the Korea. Its two other co-founders — CTO Changseong Ho and CPO Jiwon Moon — are Korean and it has an office in capital city Seoul, in addition to its locations in San Francisco and Singapore.

Viki has passed 1 billion videos views and its strong international focus has seen its users translate its global collection of content into close to 200 million words of subtitles, across 150 different languages.

The company will continue its international push, Hovaghimian says, as it looks to add more global material, with India TV shows and drama likely to be among the new music and video content coming soon.

The CEO reveals that the company uses a dual approach of brokering big names deals and sourcing content locally on the ground. He is particularly proud of the community of dedicated fans and translators that the company has built, and the appeal that this international reach gives to content producers.

“We’re not built like YouTube with thousands of engineers,” he explains, “but we do use social and our community to reach out across the world.”

For an example of Viki’s multilingual approach, here’s ‘Welcome to My Life’ by Simple Plan — part of the new music catalogue — which is available with subtitles in nine different languages; each of which has been translated by Viki’s community.

Have you heard of K-Pop?

Two years ago the answer would almost certainly be no, unless you were living in Korea and other parts of Asia, but today the Korean music genre is increasingly followed the world over, thanks TO its online reach, which just got extended further still.

The Korean pop (K-Pop) industry has taken two significant steps towards growing its already impressive online footprint after industry-wide content pages were established on both Facebook and Google+. These moves will help bringing stars, music, news and multimedia to millions of existing and potential new fans across the planet.

Social networks and the Internet are opening the world like never before and K-Pop, a genre of pop music from South Korea, is fast becoming an example of the international opportunity that the Web can offer.

A K-Pop Hub has been launched on Google+ to give users of the social network an easy and convenient way to keep up with their favourite stars while, in partnership with Facebook, a dedicated (and official) K-Pop Page is now active on the 900 million member strong social network.

Korean entertainment firm SM Entertainment launched the Facebook Page that will featuree content from the firm’s artists star, including photos, videos and other multimedia. Updates will be posted in Korean and English, as Asia One reports, making it relevant for overseas followers of K-Pop, as well as those at home.

The launch of the Google+ K-Pop hub, and Google’s promotion of the social network in South Korea, had been delayed until the search giant got clearance to launch its mobile app. The app is a crucial addition to Google+’s marketing and reach, given the how smartphone-crazy Korea is – having just passed 50 percent ownership.

The hub includes an initial four groups – Beast, SISTAR, After School and INFINITE – but Google is confident it will add more soon. Users that circle the hub can receive all updates from the members bands, with content available in English, Japanese and Korean.

As we explained back in February, music stars are playing a key role bringing Internet users from across Asia on to the Google+ service, with Japanese super girl band AKB48 the most notable example to date.

While K-Pop’s move to tap into Google+ has been a long time coming, the additional presence on Facebook will further extend the industry’s impressive digital footprint and global influence.

Already there is a dedicated K-Pop YouTube page, thanks to an agreement with Google last November, which gives the artists and recording labels greater visibility on the world’s most popular video site, which sees 800 million unique visitors each month.

Groups like Girls Generation — managed by SM Entertainment — are leading the charge worldwide. Their video for ‘Gee’, for example, has racked up more than 75 million views since it was posted in 2009.

Despite the Korean lyrics, the video has been watched right across the world — primarily in Australia, the Middle East and North America — as YouTube’s own stats below show. The main demographic is young women (13-24 years old) and men aged 35-44, which is typical for girl groups from Korea.

Global consumption is a common theme for much of the K-Pop collective on YouTube, and it demonstrates how the Web and YouTube are helping to take the music genre global, and beyond simply just the Korea diaspora overseas.

SM Entertainment’s official YouTube channel has more than 500,000 subscribers and, just a day after it launched, the Facebook Page has already accumulated more than 29,000 fans – a number that will surely grow rapidly.

It isn’t just online initiatives, as offline activities are breaking new ground too. Further proof of K-Pop’s popularity in the US — and the influence of the Internet — came when YouTube organised a concert neat its Mountain View HQ, which took place on Monday. The gig was set up in partnership with top Korean entertainment broadcaster MBC, and included a series A-list popular stars, such as Girls Generation.

Demand was such that free tickets to the show sold out within an hour of being released. Those that couldn’t make it could catch the gig broadcast live on YouTube Presents, becoming the K-Pop event to be showcased there. Given the success, other K-Pop-related broadcasts could well follow soon.

Twitter is a slightly different proposition, partly because it is not as popular as Google and Facebook in Korea, but also because it doesn’t lend itself to promoting multimedia quite so effectively.

The K-Pop stars themselves are leading the microblogging efforts, and a number of them have accrued massive follower numbers on the service. 2PM star Nichkhun, for example, engages his 1.2 million followers daily in a mixture of languages to accommodate them.

With YouTube, Google+ and Facebook under its belt, Korea’s pop industry has three of the most significant content services on the Web within its digital locker, and looks set to only continue to grow its presence the world over through them, and other Web-based initiatives.

For those that are curious about what all the fuss is about, here’s the ‘Gee’ video from Girls Generation.

Despite a late start, smartphones have now passed 50 percent penetration among South Korea’s mobile phone owners, according to new data released by the Korea Communications Commission, which praised the associated benefits.

The comission’s findings revealed the industry-wide statistics, which are reported by The Chosunilbo:

According to the three mobile service providers KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus on Monday, the number of smartphone users stands at 26.72 million, 50.8 percent of all 52.55 million mobile subscribers.

The progress is particularly impressive considering that the country was a relative late bloomer, and the first app-centric smartphone did not go on sale there until 2009.

The growth of devices was heralded by KCC director Seok Je-Beom, who spoke of the positive effects that always-on Internet, apps and other features have provided Korean smartphone owners, as AFP reports:

The wide popularity of smartphones has transformed not only our daily lives but also society in general. It adds innovations to how work gets done in companies as well as creating new markets.

Korea is notably home to industry giant Samsung. Thanks to its Android-based devices, the company is the smartphone market’s biggest player, accounting for 42 percent of all shipments in the first quarter of 2012, according to IDC.

However arch rival Apple, which has been threatened by possible legal action from Samsung in Korea, has also performed well on its rival’s home turf.

The iPhone passed sales of 20 million units last October, before the iPhone 4S was launched. The iPad has also been a success and is outpacing the competition, and passed 1 million official sales in February, but that’s not included countless devices that were purchased overseas and brought back to the country.

Apple recently expanded its returns policy in Korea, where customers receive no-questions-asked brand new replacements for devices that develop a ‘fault’ within a month of purchase. Previously it had been active for the iPhone, but it now covers all products sold in the country.

Growing up watching movies like The Terminator, I always thought it would be amazing if humans too could have a visual system that could analyze we are looking at in real-time what. As it turns out, the future is actually not as far away as you may think, and I’m not talking about Google’s smart glasses.

Augmented Reality (AR) is the combination of computer generated data and the real world and, in recent years, many developers around the globe have been experimenting with the technology. One Korean startup, in particular, is making significant progress with AR.

Olaworks, which was founded in 2006, focuses on the development of computer vision and graphic technologies. The company’s technology works on cameras on devices, such as smartphones or tablets to accomplish a variety of functions, and include augmented reality and image recognition.

While Olaworks has a few apps to its name already, its main focus is the creation of technology which can be sold or licensed to other companies. Olaworks currently holds more than 60 patents and its technologies are used on various platforms around the world.

Most recently the company showcased its services at the Mobile World Congress 2012 in Barcelona, Spain, where the image below was taken.

The company’s facial analysis technology has received a lot of attention and it incorporates a number of features including, recognition of similarities between faces, gender recognition and detection of facial features. A number of other features that Olaworks has developed — such as smile and blink detection — have the potential to be extremely useful for the digital cameras and devices of the future.

So far, however, the most successful solution that the company has developed are facial recognition and real-time tracking. Using a smartphone camera, the software can recognize a face registered in its database or address book, before going on to display the information about the person in real-time on the screen. As the person’s head moves, so it is tracked until it goes out of sight.

The company is taking that object analysis a step further with its new Web-based tool Mnemonics. The system differs from existing solutions as it searches for images “by context”, rather than using text.

Mnemonics connects similar images from around the Web, from where these connections can be projected onto maps or a 3D globe model. Images are arranged into ’seedclusters’, which house the most similar images and ’superclusters’, which are largely similar.

More details about Mnemonics are revealed in the video below:

Olaworks’ has worked with various major companies, such as Naver and LG Electronics, who used its technology in search engines, apps and other various software. Olaworks even developed its own app named ScanSearch, however it was only released in Korea and to a limited number of Windows phones users in Europe. The app uses augmented reality to show various locations in the direction that a mobile phone’s camera is pointed; including restaurants, bars and hospitals.

Olaworks’ describes it services as providing “the best experience thru[sic] photos and video”, while CSO Ryu Joong-hee explains company’s philosophy further:

At Olaworks, if we see a need for something in the market then we create the technology or solutions to match those needs.

Augmented reality is coming soon, and the Korean company is one of the pioneers making it happen.

➤ Olaworks

The admittedly small version of the flyer — found on Daum by Phandroid — includes the image of half of a device and, most importantly, the words “Samsung Galaxy S III, New Generation Coming, May 22nd, London, United Kingdom”:

Little is known of the upcoming device so it is difficult to say if the sleek looking device here is indeed ‘The One’, but given recent speculation around the date, the event’s timing seems plausible.

May 22 is that a date that has been speculated for the Galaxy S III launch before, and a tip off came from the design for another media invitation (common theme here) from one of the Korean firm’s PR agencies, pictured below - via Android Central:

There’s been plenty of speculation about the arrival of the Galaxy S II. Earlier this year, Samsung dismissed rumors that it would launch the device in March while recent comments from the company’s China President suggested an April launch.

We’re incline to think that, with these two strands of evidence, a May 22 launch is on the cards, but you can never be sure of these things so we’ll ultimately have to wait and see. As, and when we get confirmed details we’ll let you know.

Speculated launch dates aside, the device is going to be a hugely significant one for Samsung — which is poised to regain the global smartphone top spot from Apple — as it will compete with the iPhone 4S and upcoming fifth-generation, which is rumored to be launching this year.

What we do know about the phone is that it will feature a Quad-core processor, as that is one of the few details Samsung has shared publicly.

With news of quad-core processors dominating the press lately, we expect Samsung to equip its latest Android devices with the Exynos 4412, although nothing is certain at this point. The 32-nanometer processor will provide up to 26 percent improve performance on Samsung’s current 45-nanometer line-up which, good news for Samsung fans, could see battery life increase by more than half.

However, it is not unclear which GPU (graphics processing unit) Samsung intends to line-up alongside its quad-core chip, which will be important to die-hard smartphone fans. Many will be looking to compare Samsung’s overall offering with Nvidia’s Tegra 3 technology, Apple’s A5X processor and Qualcomm’s new dual-core Krait chips, which have been adopted by HTC.

Samsung has confirmed that the memory chip production plant that it is planning to develop in China will cost $7 billion, making it the largest overseas project that the Korean electronics giant has undertaken to date.

Economic Times reports that the South Korean firm has revealed that it has secured an initial $2.3 billion in investment for the project, which will it estimates will cost $7 billion in total.

Last month, Samsung revealed details of the the operations, which is its largest overseas investment and will be based in the northwestern city of Xian, but the total cost of investment has been revealed for the first time today.

The base is aimed at producing NAND flash memory chips — which are used in smartphones and tablet computers — on the ground in China, allowing the firm to better supply its existing and prospective customers in the country.

The plan was first drawn up in 2011 and the start of 2012 saw the South Korean government give Samsung the green light to proceed with the landmark move. Though it is still awaiting the final approval of Chinese authorities, Samsung is optimistic that the new plant will be up and running in the second half of 2013.

Apple is one of Samsung’s key customers but the Cupertino-based firm, which rivals it in the smartphone space, is moving away from its dependency on third party suppliers. Apple confirmed the purchase of Israeli-based NAND supplier Nanobit this year, although it did not reveal the value of the deal, which was thought to be worth $500 million.

Aside from developing its own options, Apple is moving away from Samsung and turned to Elpida for DRAM and Toshiba for the NAND for its new iPad. Samsung does, however, provide the Retina display for the third-generation Apple tablet and it is also placing greater emphasis on the LCD side of its business after spinning off Samsung Display, which became the world’s largest display manufacturer overnight.

Samsung is tipped to post record profit once again when it announces figures for business during the first quarter of the year, which are expected next month, according to a Korea Times report.

Citibank expects that the Korean firm will post “historically high” results as it continues to grow impressively. January saw Samsung post record figures for the final quarter of 2011 — during which operating profit hit 5.3 trillion won ($4.72 billion) — and JP Morgan expects that operating revenue over the last three months will surpass that.

While Samsung’s phones are performing well across the world, with its Android-based smartphones amongst the most popular devices in the US and China, the success of arch-rival Apple is also a key contributor to its profits.

The Cupertino-based firm is one of the customers that Samsung provides parts for smartphones, tablet and other devices. For example, the Korea company supplies the Retina display and A5X processor for Apple’s new iPad, as a recent product teardown revealed.

As Apple has increased its production, in line with growing demand, so Samsung has seen its own business benefit. However, it may face new competition after Hon Hai (the parent company of Foxconn) invested in Sharp as part of a deal to “to launch cost competitive components and products.”

The duo plan to use each others components to help drive down cost and attract new business, and it remains to be seen if the boost will see Sharp cut into Samsung’s business and customer base.

Samsung’s most recent filing did not break out smartphone figures but, at the start of the year, its sales are estimated to have reached 35 million units, more than tripling sales of HTC devices in the same period.

Sales of the Galaxy S II handset have helped the company dominate the Android smartphone market. Its newer Galaxy Note is also performing well, and the company yesterday confirmed that it passed 5 million shipments of the device, having seen 1 million sales within two months of launch.

Following much speculation, Samsung has released a ‘value pack’ upgrade for Galaxy S devices which allows users of range to enjoy some of the benefits of the latest Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) of the Android operating system.

Samsung has been actively rolling out ICS, aka Android 4.0, starting in Europe and Korea last week but this new update, for Korea only so far, is open to owners of devices from the Galaxy S range, which is not eligible for the latest flavor.

Rumor of plans for the value pack were dismissed by Samsung in January, before an industry insider tipped them to arrive at the beginning of the month. It’s a little later than that now but faithful Galaxy S owners in Samsung’s native Korea are likely to be happy nonetheless.

The biggest draw of the pack is the addition of FaceUnlock while Samsung has also provided the option to take photos while shooting video, as well as fixing bugs, making launching improvements and enhancing the running setting.

The release allows Galaxy S devices to upgrade from Eclair (Android 2.1) to Froyo (Android 2.2), and Froyo users can step up to Gingerbread (Android 2.3). Galaxy K and Galaxy U phones are also supported with the Android flavor upgrades.

The update is only for Korea only right now, and it is not clear whether it will be made available to customers worldwide. We’ve reached out to Samsung to see if it can clarify this.

Codinator is an efficient graphical user interface (GUI) design program made by South Korean startup Wit Studio. Until now, the software has only supported the niche and fairly unrecognized Windows Mobile market in its native South Korea, but it has expanded its international support and is now aiming to reach new platforms.

The first Windows Phone device, the Nokia Lumia 710, was released in Korea at the end of last year on December 26 and, including it, around 24,000 projects have been made using the first version of Codinator.

However, Wit Studio is now ready to move on from catering solely for Microsoft’s Expression Blend, with plans to release Codinator 2.0 this year. The new version of Codinator will be an independent and cross-platform version of the software and it will be installable on both Windows and Mac computers.

Background

Six months after founding Wit Studio in early 2010, the company received investment from incubator Primer and began developing its flagship product. Around one year later, the first version of Codinator was released in May 2011.

As smartphone usage continued to increase, the company predicts that GUI design programs would become widely used. However, the main tool for GUI design has always been Adobe Photoshop.

Wit Studio director Chae Eun-seok explains more:

There are many design programs for other areas of design, but strangely in the field of GUI design, Photoshop has been the only program worth using. As time goes on more people will be doing GUI design and it’s clear that there will be some problems in this area.

Chae points out the disadvantages of using Photoshop as a GUI design tool.

Firstly, Photoshop has so many functions that it is difficult for users to know all the different functions. Unless you’re an expert it is hard to get a grasp on every single tool, some that are rarely used. Secondly, because Photoshop is designed for photo editing there are many functions that are not needed for GUI design and actually some functions needed that aren’t in Photoshop.

Advantages

One of the tools that Codinator boasts is a color wheel. While this might not sound new, it allows users to pin the colors of various elements of their design on to the wheel and alter them simultaneously. Another function is “smart lists” which lets users build complex list interfaces with ease.

Wit Studio has also catered to those with color blindness or color vision deficiency by providing color vision simulation. This allows developers to test their designs by simulating how they would look to persons with such conditions.

Codinator has essentially been designed for companies that want to adapt to the ever-changing environment of software development. The smartphone market is constantly expanding but trends are changing quickly as new mobile phones come in and out of popular use. Once Codinator users have finished their design, because the program is compatible with various devices, it is useful when making apps with N-screen features in mind.

CEO Kim Dae-wook explains another notable feature of the program:

Another key benefit to Codinator is that it uses less memory compared to other standard UI tools.

This is enabled by the use of vector images rather than bitmaps, which reduces memory usage by  a significant 85 percent. Wit Studio is hoping that its product will appeal to smaller businesses which are trying to reduce costs for projects or UI design.

At the moment Codinator depends on the Microsoft developers environment but we are creating an independent and cross-platform tool. We intend for designs created with Codinator to be used on all platforms including MFC, HTML5, iOS and Android.

International ambition

In addition to moving to new platforms, Wit Studio is aiming to sell focus selling the product in overseas markets. Wit Studio will focus on lowering the language barrier and placing emphasis on Codinator’s technology and ease of use.

The company has high aims for Codinator 2.0 worldwide, as Kim explains:

Just as Photoshop has become a worldwide tool for designers, we want to make Codinator a competitive product on the market.

➤ Codinator