NEXCON Technology Co., Ltd. CEO Kim Jong-hwan holds a protection circuit module called MUSE at the head office in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, on Tuesday.                                                                                                           Park Hyun-koo/The Korea Herald

With Apple, for instance, he has been doing business for more than eight years, supplying PCMs for virtually all portable devices of the American corporation.
NEXCON is planning to construct a new manufacturing facility in the U.S. to ensure a smooth supply for LG Chem’s plant in Holland, Michigan. The company currently runs two plants in Nanjing and Tianjin, China.
Kim added the company is in talks to acquire a motor maker. Some Japanese manufacturers are also being considered.
Last year, its sales surpassed 162.7 billion won, more than 10 times higher than a decade earlier, and its operating profit was about 8.6 billion won.
When founded in 1996, NEXCON struggled to penetrate the rechargeable battery market which had been dominated by Japanese companies such as the world’s No. 1 producer SANYO Electric, Sony and Panasonic.
“No one wanted to start business with us,” Kim said. “We had no recognition, and those major companies dominated the market already. We couldn’t break the wall.”

The 1999 partnership with Motorola, which allowed domestication of PCMs, jumpstarted its sales growth by boosting exports to other big international battery-related manufacturers. It was listed on the KOSDAQ market in 2000.
Within a year, sales grew nearly 50 percent to 13 billion won ($10.8 million). 　Korea became the biggest competitor for Japan in the rechargeable battery market with the government’s support since 2003.
Korean firms such as Samsung SDI and LG Chem grew fast to take 38 percent of the market share in worldwide battery production.
Japan, which had controlled 94 percent of the market in 2000, saw the figure plunge gradually to reach 43 percent last year, according to the Korea Energy Economics Institute. Sanyo topped the market with a 20.2 percent share.
The Ministry of Knowledge Economy recently announced that the government would invest 15 trillion won in rechargeable battery technology by 2020 to gain 50 percent of the global market share, as part of the government’s low-carbon green growth project.
The rechargeable battery market is expected to grow six-fold from $12.3 billion in 2010 to $77.9 billion in 2020, according to the ministry.
NEXCON has been spurring itself to provide total solutions in the battery application fields, by diversifying its business scope into smart battery modules for laptops and battery management systems for hybrid and electric cars, on top of smart grid technologies.
Smart grids allow real-time monitoring of electricity input and output -- based on information technology systems -- and are designed from the outset to incorporate renewable energy such as wind and solar energy into the main power grid.
Seoul said it would inject 27 trillion won to create the necessary infrastructure to build the world’s first nationwide smart grid networks by 2030, while establishing an international smart grid action network in an effort to upgrade power grids globally. 
By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldm.com)