Invest KOREA

South Korean exporters will remain resilient in the first three months of this year as global demand is likely to grow for new technology products, Barclays Capital said Thursday.

"We continue to believe that the outlook for exports will brighten further in the first quarter," said Leong Wai Ho, an economist at the British investment bank.

Makers of personal computers have begun shipping their initial batches of notebooks equipped with Intel's latest Sandy Bridge chip, which combines graphics and microprocessor functions on a single piece of silicon, he said.

Many electronics makers are expected to launch new tablet computers in the first quarter of this year in a bid to replicate the success of Apple's iPad.

According to market researcher Gartner Inc., tablet shipments are expected to reach 54.8 million units in 2011 and displace around 10 percent of PC units by 2014.

Leong said he expects "a resurgence of electronics shipments" starting from this quarter and it will benefit South Korea, which has a dominant position in the electronics value chain.

The economist also expected the Korean won to gradually become stronger to 1,025 against the U.S. dollar by the end of 2011 due to rising imported price pressures, particularly from further large revisions to minimum wages in China.

Source: Yonhap News (Jan. 27, 2011)