S. Korea's IT exports expand 26.5% in August

South Korea's information technology (IT) product exports expanded 26.5 percent in August from a year ago, on the back of a surge in semiconductor and smartphone shipments, the government said Tuesday.

According to the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, the country's IT product exports totaled 13.4 billion U.S. dollars last month, up from 10.6 billion U.S. dollars tallied a year ago.

Thanks to the strong exports, the country's trade surplus in the IT sector reached as high as 7.03 billion U.S. dollars, up 37. 3 percent from 5.12 billion U.S. dollars tallied the previous year.

The brisk IT exports came as outbound shipments of semiconductors soared 64.9 percent year-on-year to 4.74 billion U. S. dollars.

While the overall exports of mobile phones marked a decrease of 18.4 percent to 1.86 billion U.S. dollars, those of smartphones sharply grew to 560 million U.S. dollars, four times the amount of the previous year.

The accumulative amount of IT exports for the first eight months of 2010 totaled 51.52 billion U.S. dollars, up 48 percent from 34.75 billion U.S. dollars the same period last year.

Source:Xinhua