Now it’s time to take a close look at a small but competitive business making a difference for the Korean economy. This week’s spotlight is on Sky Media, a new power player in the TV manufacturing industry.

The Korea Electronics Show is Korea’s largest household electronics fair, and the 2014 KES it will last for four days in Seoul, starting Tuesday. The show has served as a guiding light for the electronics sector since it first launched in 1969. The KES has also been giving out KES Innovation Awards to amazing innovations in the electronics field for the past three years. Among the 18 products selected for this year’s award, Sky Media’s 3D Sky 500 is most eye-catching. This product demonstrates the advances made in glasses-free 3D TVs. How has a small company like Sky Media made such an innovation? Here’s Sky Media’s Special Media Business Director Koh Kwang-tae to answer that question.

Special glasses were required to watch anything 3D, but our 3D TV needs no glasses. We developed this glasses-free 3D TV on our own and succeeded in commercializing it. There have been some glasses-free 3D televisions supplied to research institutions or exhibits, but they have been prototypes made for demonstration purposes, not for real reception of TV signals. With our 3D television we designed a filter that projects an image from the left side of the screen to the left eye and one on the right side to the right eye, and applied that filter to the conventional LCD TV screen. So we can perceive an image in 3D without special glasses.

3D televisions are an amazing innovation that delivers the most exciting TV-watching experience. However, viewers needed to wear clumsy glasses to watch 3D images, which was perceived as a shortcoming that hindered the growth of 3D media devices. But now Sky Media came up with a glasses-free 3D television and is going to introduce it at this year’s KES. Even giant TV manufactures had trouble developing this glasses-free 3D technology, but the comparatively smaller Sky Media has done what big TV makers couldn’t. Now industry attention is on Sky Media as the company has commercialized glasses-free 3D TVs.

Sky Media was established in 2003 and has focused on displays. We have our own in-house lab and our researchers are working hard to develop new display technologies. The most important thing is to standardize the production process and workers need to be skilled in their jobs. When production processes are standardized, we can cut costs by buying materials in bulk. Also, when our workers sharpen their skills and gain know-how over a long period of time, their abilities can help boost our output and product competitiveness. So the reason we ran our own manufacturing plant from the beginning was to steadily enhance the skills of our workers.

Sky Media’s founder, Alex So, had specialized in overseas sales for Daewoo Electronics and Anam Electronics. He had inside knowledge about the TV manufacturing industry and TV sales networks, so he focused on technology development from early on. Other small TV makers relied on price competitiveness to survive in this field, but with the onslaught of low-end Chinese-made televisions, Sky Media thought that going high-tech was the way to guarantee its success. The company took advantage of its small size to make a name for itself.

Large manufacturers produce large volumes of only a few products, but small businesses like us can manufacture products that are tailored to diverse customer needs. In the old days people were just satisfied with watching something on TV, but nowadays viewers want interactive experiences. We can respond to that customer demand quickly and develop products that are just what consumers requested. Our quick response and timely development and production were key to our success.

Korea’s LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics are the two top names in the global TV market. So it was difficult for smaller TV makers to survive in the local market dominated by the two manufacturing giants. But Sky Media found a niche that they could take advantage of. They discovered growth potential in customized TVs and came to develop LCD, LED, 3D and smart TVs that fit customer needs. As a result, their sales revenue, which was less than 7.3 million U.S. dollars in 2008, is expected to post more than 65 million dollars this year, most of which comes from overseas markets.



We export more than we sell locally. About 60 to 65% of our products are sold abroad. Our TVs are exported to South America, Eastern Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia, and demands from South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia are growing steadily.

Sky Media has eyed overseas markets from the beginning. The company had taken their televisions to just about every industry show around the globe and cut through the red tapes in various markets by sending its own employees and materials to local factories to roll out finished products. As a result of their relentless passion, televisions under the Sky Media label are sold in some 20 countries around the world, including the U.S., Japan, and countries in Africa and South America. Sky Media is expected to take itself to the next level by releasing glasses-free 3D television this fall. Its next project is the hologram TV, which the company plans to showcase at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games in 2018. Judging from the determination and hard work demonstrated by Sky Media so far, it won’t be long before this small giant achieves that goal.