Korean firm to pitch smart office to Neom  

Korean IT giant Naver will pitch not only its staple internet and cloud services, but also a whole building filled with its latest technology to Saudi officials during its visit as part of Korean delegation.

As the IT company aims to bid for a $500 billion city development project in Saudi Arabia, its new office building — named Naver 1784 — is now doubling as a technology showroom.
 
Naver is one of the companies accompanying Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong’s trip to Saudi Arabia, seeking to participate in the Middle Eastern country’s massive NEOM smart city project. The delegation departed on Friday and will return on Nov. 9. 

A Naver spokesperson said the trip to Saudi Arabia is also part of the sales activity to promote our smart building technologies along with our artificial intelligence [AI], cloud and robots.
  
When Naver first began to eye the global market, commerce was its first option, as the company runs a massive online marketplace that reached an annual trading volume of 28 trillion won ($19.7 billion) in Korea last year. 
 
In October last year, Naver made inroads into Japan’s e-commerce market with MySmartStore, an online marketplace, leveraging its 89-million-user Line messenger app.
 
Along with e-commerce, business-to-business services — such as chatbots, identity verification and call automation — are part of the company’s global expansion plan, led by Naver Cloud, a cloud service subsidiary of Naver.
 
With NEOM city reported to be filled with all things tech ranging from robotics, cloud and automated systems, the trip may offer the jump-start Naver needs to accelerate its global business-to-business project.

Source: https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/