The transitional period of revolutionary changes destructing and redefining services, products, and business models pose great challenges to not just Samsung Electronics but all tech companies across the globe, and Korean companies must have global eyes to survive in the new age, said Samsung Electronics president Sohn Young-kwon.

"I have witnessed destructive innovation affecting many business models in retail, manufacturing and finance. Tech firms drove oil majors, banks and other big manufacturers out of the top 10 list in terms of market capital in the U.S. Now is the time to think about how we can create a better industry ecosystem for business,” Sohn told the `Maekyung CES Forum – Korean Night` held under the auspices of Maekyung Media Group on Tuesday (local time) on the sidelines of the CES 2019 trade show in Las Vegas.

The event designed to share insights on new tech trends was attended by 200 industry figures including Samsung Electronics president Sohn Young-kwon, CTA vice president Brian Moon, SparkLabs Group co-founder & partner Bernard Moon, Moloco co-founder and CEO Ikkjin Ahn, Spatial co-founder and chief product officer Jinha Lee, and Maeil Broadcasting Network CEO Chang Seung-joon. Guests delivered presentations on artificial intelligence, augmented reality, virtual reality and CES and Silicon Valley trends in 2019.

“I feel this year will be quite challenging for the industry,” said Sohn, who has participated in CES over the past 30 years during which he served as a startup CEO and Intel president before his current post. “Products, services and business models are in transition to a big change and they are facing digital disruption.”

He also expressed concerns about a possible decline in competitive edge in Korean companies in the current situation. "There is a doubt as to whether Korean companies can do well in their invisible platform business. Looking at this year’s CES, Korean firms don’t make a big difference from Chinese rivals in 5G, display, artificial intelligence and data analytics. It is a reality that products or services focusing on the Korean market only are less likely to succeed,” he emphasized.

As a breakthrough solution for Korean companies for 2019 and beyond, he proposed Global 2.0, which means think globally and act locally.

By Kim Gyu-sik and Minu Kim

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