Big pay cuts for Samsung CEOs
Samsung’s three co-CEOs had their compensation packages reduced by 30-80 per cent for the first nine months of the year compared with the same period last year, according to a regulatory filing.

In Q3 the company reported its first quarterly profit gain in two years.

Samsung vice chairman and co-CEO Kwon Oh-hyun’s total compensation for the period fell by almost half to KRW3.82 billion ($3.25 million). The total included a KRW2.23 billion bonus.

Yoon Boo-keun, head of the consumer electronics business, received KRW2.34 billion, 35 per cent less than a year ago.

Shin Jong-kyun, CEO of the mobile business, saw his salary drop to KRW2.28 billion from KRW12.03 billion a year ago.

Nokia appoints head of India
Nokia named Sandeep Girotra as head of India as part of the planned merger of Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent.

Girotra will oversee the combined company’s customer operations across India.

He joined Nokia Networks in 1996 and has held various roles in India, heading the region since 2011. In 2010 he served as head of sales for business solution networks. He was head of the company’s customer team at Idea Cellular from 2007 to 2009.

Girotra will report to the company’s chief customer operations officer, Ashish Chowdhary, who is based in the UK.

Last week the company announced the appointment of Paul Tyler as head of Asia Pacific and Japan.

The appointments are subject to the successful closing of the deal announced in April.

Huawei demos next-gen quick charging tech
Watt Lab, part of Huawei’s Central Research Institute, unveiled its latest quick charging lithium-ion batteries that can charge 10 times faster than normal batteries, reaching 50 per cent of capacity in a few minutes.

Certified by Huawei’s terminal test department, one lithium-ion battery with a 600 mAh capacity was charged to 68 per cent capacity in two minutes, while a 3000 mAh battery, with an energy density above 620 Wh/L, was charged to 48 per cent capacity in five minutes.

To achieve these results, demoed at the Battery Symposium in Japan, Huawei bonded heteroatoms to the molecule of graphite in anode, which could be a catalyst for the capture and transmission of lithium through carbon bonds. The heteroatoms increase the charging speed of batteries without decreasing energy density or battery life.

Korea has 72M mobile banking accounts
Mobile banking in South Korea, a country with 50 million people, is enjoying healthy growth, with accounts hitting 71.9 million in Q3, according to the central bank.

The Bank of Korea said 62 per cent of the country’s 115 million internet banking subscribers use mobile banking.

The number of smartphone banking users increased 4.4 per cent in Q3 from the previous quarter to 60.1 million. Daily banking transactions processed on smartphones averaged KRW2.5 trillion ($2.1 billion) in Q3. The bank noted that customers were still reluctant to make large transactions via their smartphones.

SK Telecom, Nokia showcase LTE low-power IoT
SK Telecom and Nokia Networks conducted an over-the-air trial of LTE low-power technology for the Internet of Things (IoT) at the operator’s network technology R&D centre outside of Seoul.

The firms showcased IoT connectivity with a power saving mode they said can extend the battery life of IoT modems to more than ten years. The demo, which used Nokia’s Flexi Multiradio 10 base station and IoT devices from GCT Semiconductor, validates the potential of half-duplex mode as a viable means to increase IoT connectivity efficiency, the companies said in a statement.

Andrew Cope, head of Korea for Nokia Networks, said the trial underlines its focus on making LTE a technology-of-choice for IoT, evolving to narrowband-LTE for IoT in the future.