Smart Battery/Cell Forum 2010 14 Jul 2010 The Electronic Times Smart Battery/Cell Forum 2010 will be held on 14 July at the Grand Ballroom of COEX. Secondary batteries are no longer used exclusively on mobile electronic devices. They serve as core components of electric cars that are being competitively promoted by various governments. Furthermore, these “batteries” will be developed into systems that store electricity at homes in the Smart Grid era. Thus, secondary batteries are facing revolutionary changes in the market. This forum focuses on the problem of South Korea’s high reliance on foreign battery products. The forum invited specialists of corporations that have successfully performed in the battery market in order to study the current and future states of the market. Furthermore, the forum will focus on strategizing of having electric materials and components designed and developed by Korean firms. This forum will mainly be divided into morning lectures and afternoon seminars. If morning lectures have a general focus on the secondary battery industry, afternoon seminars look at the specifics of the industry. Therefore, it is important to acquire a general understanding of the market from the morning lecture and to choose a specific area of interest for the afternoon seminars. The first lecturer is John Gartner, a senior analyst contributing to Pike Research’s clean transportation practice, with a concentration on business and technology issues. He will speak on the subject of ‘changes in the energy paradigm.’ He will point out the drastic changes toward a cleaner and more efficient energy on a global scale and the significance of technologies involving secondary batteries required for growth in the electric vehicles, Smart Grid, and new energy industries. Second lecturer is Man-Ki Chung, a director general for electronics and IT industries at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. He will talk about the government’s business growth strategy for secondary batteries. Ju-won Seo, a CEO of ED Research, will talk about the analysis results of Korea’s patents for the last five years for secondary battery field. According to the results, South Korea came in second after Japan in terms of national patent competitive strengths and Samsung SDI came in first, LG Chemical as fifth in terms of corporations. There will be many other prominent and leading figures of the industry who will be lecturing at the forum.