LG Group (Seoul, Korea) (www.lge.co.kr) says it will expand its research and development investment for its electronics business by 23% to 1.85T won next year. Korea's second largest conglomerate will spend 75% of this on strategic and core products such as digital TVs, PDPs, LCDs, organic electro-luminescence (OEL) devices, mobile phones and digital appliances. This intensive R&D effort is aimed at securing LG's global leadership in PDPs and LCDs for large flat-screen TVs and computers by 2005, and in the digital TV sector by 2006.

In the digital TV market, LG will concentrate on the development of premium and economy models. The group will also strengthen strategic alliances with Chinese and Jap anese companies in PDPs, and come up with differentiated LCD models for TV use. LG's Chinese R&D center staffing will rise from 50 to 180 in 2003, for example.
LG is also planning on expanding its investments regarding digital TV productions. It reports a set aside of $90M for increasing production capacity at one of its factories, from 500K units per year to 3M by 2005. The key products to be manufactured here include 50-inch PDP TVs, 30-inch LCD TVs and 60-inch LCD projection TVs.

In PDPs, the company will invest $778M through 2005 in a bid to gain a 20% market share of PDP TVs by 2005. To that end, LG will expand production of PDP TVs from the current annual production capacity of 300K units to 1.2M by 2005. It will also establish local production, distribution and sales operations at its factories in Shenyang, China and Reynosa, Mexico, so both can produce the full line of PDP TVs. The goal is to procure 90% of the sets locally by 2005, while improving visual performance.

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