The Korean government says it'll invest tens of millions of dollars in one of the hottest
and most talked about industries,... the Internet of Things.
Internet of Things envisions connecting items we use in our everyday lives to the internet...
in the name of convenience and inter-connectivity.
Arirang News' Laah Hyun-kyung reports.
36 million dollars from the government and another 12 million from private sectors.
The Korean government is gearing up to foster new growth engines in the domestic technology
market.
Micro Electro Mechanical System, or MEMS sensor chips are one of the core technologies in
the Internet of Things market,... which envisions connecting everyday items such as phones,
fridges and boilers to the internet.
The MEMS sensors, embedded in our devices, help analyze data by collecting and registering
changes of information such as temperature, light, sound and motion.
However most Korean companies currently import the chips because they don't have the technology
to produce them.
And that is why the government is planning to inject some 20 million dollars by 2019
into developing and manufacturing more of these chips in Korea.
Korea hopes to produce more than 2-hundred-20 million dollars worth of MEMS sensors by the
year 2020.
That's a three-fold increase from what the country manufactured last year.
Another 16 million will go into developing devices that transfer data collected from
sensors to long-distance control centers.
Korea is not able to produce such devices yet,... but the government is rolling out
ambitious plans to create a manufacturing volume worth more than 500 million dollars
by 2020.
Some industry experts wonder aloud whether the government's targets are realistic.
But others are hopeful... that Korea will be at the forefront of conceptualizing the
Internet of Things in real life... by utilizing its state-of-the-art IT and mobile telecommunications
technologies.
Laah Hyun-kyung, Arirang News.