Korea-US
third annual Trade summit Roundup: Interactive media & Wireless
Chetan Sharma
Seattle was the venue for
Korea -
Pacific U.S. States 3rd Annual Joint Trade Conference
(13-14th Oct). A high level Korean delegation was in town to
educate, discuss, and forge new partnerships. The theme and topic of
discussions was
Interactive
Media and Wireless Technologies.
I had the distinct honor and privilege of serving on the US Advisory
Committee and of moderating the US panel. It was also an opportunity to
meet with some senior executives from the Korean wireless industry.
This note summarizes the discussions and observations from the summit.
The US panel consisted of executives from Infospace, Disney, Melodeo,
and AOL. The major discussion points on mobile future were:
·
Integrated mobile search
·
Affinity groups and superdistribution
·
Consistent user experience across devices, networks, languages, regions.
·
Active Home Screen Content push and voice input
·
New content genres (e.g. podcasting)
·
Mobile advertising
·
Efficient DRM, management of content rights and royalties
·
Integration of customer experience across all channels
·
Access Democratization (e.g. P2P, shopping, community)
These point to the challenges of our industry and hence the
opportunities for entrepreneurs.
Korean panel consisted of current and former senior executives
from SKT and KTF – the two leading carriers. The main technical
issues that Korean telecom companies are focused on are
proliferation of the following services:
·
WiBro
·
DMB (mobile broadcasting service)
·
Home Network Service
·
Telematics
·
RFID
·
WCDMA
·
Terrestrial DTV
·
VoIP
From a business
point of view, focus is on making these services based on
fixed-priced, unlimited usage. Also, once content is purchased,
it can be used on any device (music purchased can be played on
PC, mobile device, and MP3 player) |
With Hon. Governors
Gregoire (Washington)
and Kempthorne (Idaho)
at the Summit |
Koreans are also focused on converging several different technologies
like WiBro, RFID, Zigbee. They are focused on making mobile device an
ubiquitous and perceptual interface with integrated functions to deliver
all day-to-day services. For 4G, they are not focused on one single
standard or technology but rather an amalgam of standards – most
appropriate technology is picked for the task with interoperability,
hand-off and service transparency being the critical issues.
By Sept 05, Korean market penetration was close to
80% with over 38 million subs. SKT has 51% market share while KTF 32.4%
and LGT 16.6%. The % data ARPU is inching towards DoCoMo standards of
25% and beyond.
Wireless data penetration is going to rise to over
70% by 2008.
Korea already leads the world in broadband
penetration.
One of the presenters was Dr. Jung Uck Seo (“How
Korea became a Global Telecom Leader”), who lead SKT during the nineties
when they trail blazed through the deployment of CDMA and catapulted
Korea as a leader in telecommunications. He currently heads Korea
International Trade Association (KITA). According to him, two most
important future needs are Energy and Education. In education, Korea is
specifically focused on being very competitive. The current generation
understands globalization and its impact and how to play in the future
competitive economies. SKT’s investment into the SK-Earthlink MVNO
venture is part of that strategy.
Korea is also wary of the emerging economic threat
of what Dr Seo referred to as “Chindia” or China+India. Korea is
aggressively seeking to place themselves in the emerging economies in
the world through trade, technology, and business partnerships. KITA is
focused on building a comprehensive eTrade platform. Realizing the
importance of aggressive marketing and public relations, e-Trade
Facilitation Center is working on the actual proliferation of e-Trade.
e-Trade model covers all the processes from marketing to settlement.
In 2000, in my first book,
I had proposed a mobile agent based personalized
service that acts a personal secretary. The agent is interfaced with a
variety of infotainment services and content is presented based on
context at that very instant. I was delighted to hear about an
incarnation of such a service while sitting through the SKT
presentation. 
(The service objective is to provide the most convenient services
offered by the place nearest to the customer) is a personal agent
providing intelligent interface to the services based on presence,
context, and preference information.
 Source: SKT
In my
last note, I had briefly talked about
Motorola’s Screen3 and Mobile ESPN service. These are steps in the right
direction to make phone much more than a just a talking device. 1mm
service provides a guiding light of the potential of “true” personalized
services.
Microsoft’s Shane Kim gave a demo of one of their
most popular games (Ninety-Nine Nights from
Phantagram) on XBOX. Pretty impressive.
Virtual characters are indeed becoming very real in their expressions
and activity. One of the luncheon keynotes was given by Young Kim, CEO
Innodesign, design extraordinaire, and
innovator with several innovative designs and prestigious awards to his
credits.
Korea is clearly a good case study of use of technology to enhance
everyday life. It is also a great model of how industry and government
can collaborate to achieve distinct competitive advantage.
Next
year’s summit is in Seoul.
Your
comments are always welcome.
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