Mobile in Korea

LG Electronics launched the LG Mobile World Cup, giving participants a chance to show off the speed and accuracy of their text messaging skills. This event began in Seoul, Korea on October 27 and will be in Brazil in late this year. In addition, this event will be expanded to 15 more countries and a winner of the world will be picked out next year.

According to market research company Gartner, text messaging is expanding at an explosive rate. This year, people will send an estimated 2.5 trillion text messages and this number is expected to surpass 5.6 trillion by 2012. For perspective, every people will send about 6.7 billion text messages per day this year.

As the popularity of text messaging has risen, phone manufacturers are trying to make mobile handsets which are friendly for sending text messages. (Recently, another Korean handset provider, Pantech made a contract with AT&T in order to provide "World's Thinnest Qwerty Keyboard" Handsets.) As I mentioned on the post, "SMS Usage Patterns of Korean People", over 40% text messages are sent using usual computer with QWERTY keyboard. It means usual people are familiar with QWERTY keypad and, if handsets provide a similar keypad, text messaging would be expanded more. (Also, refer to the below post, "An Innovative Mobile Keypad!!!")

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  iPhone 3G was veiled out on June 10th in WWDC. Because Apple sold 6 mil units of iPhone after launching it last year, iPhone 3G is expected to make new wave of innovative handset in 3G market. iPhone is already proved to be very helpful that mobile operators attract new customers with the innovative handset and get more revenue from data service. According to Rubicon Consulting, AT&T, which has povided iPhone exclusively in US market, sold 3 mil units of iPhone and the yearly increased revenue from iPhone is expected to get to $2 bil, even if AT&T gave $199 per unit to Apple.

  Apple is expected to go into many countries beyond US with iPhone 3G and also go to Asian markets, including Japan and Korea. In Korea, KTF is expected to be a sole provider of iPhone 3G in Korea. SK Telecom, the biggest mobile operator in Korea, might not provide iPhone 3G, because Shin-bae Kim, CEO of SK Telecom, mentioned yesterday that Apple is destabilizing the mobile market through requesting overburdened subsidy and revunue sharing to mobile operators.

  However, it is not sure whether KTF will provide iPhone 3G in Korea. KTF has a strategic alliance with NTT DoCoMo, the biggest mobile operator in Japan. (NTT DoCoMo has 10 percent stake in KTF. In addition, KTF and NTT DoCoMo acquired a Malaysian mobile operator together last year.) Thus, iPhone 3G will be provided by Softbank Mobile in Japan. Until early this year, NTT DoCoMo was expected to provide iPhone 3G in Japan, but the negotiations between the two sides have broken down, the collapse of negotiation that might make KTF not provide iPhone 3G in Korea.

   Apple announced that it will change the strategy for iPhone from providing iPhone through a sole operator in a country under an exclusive contract to providing iPhone through various operators in a country. Many experts are expecting that NTT DoCoMo will provide iPhone 3G in Japan through negotiating again with Apple. If NTT DoCoMo provides iPhone 3G, it is expected that KTF will also provide iPhone 3G in Korea.

  If iPhone 3G is launched in Korea, I will report the news again.

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