Four years before Second Life was launched and achieved success, a Korean service called Dada World with similar features was launched. Unfortunately did it fail and went under in the IT bubble but also for being ahead of its time in many ways. The project was led by a professor of Kwang Woon university who apparently didn’t give up the idea and he is now about to be the leading figure in the launch of a new service called Teo23. Teo is Korean for place and 23 refer to the twenty third century.

The main aim is the Korean market but one major difference from Second Life is the possibility to shop with real money. So, while walking around with your avatar and being social, you can also enter different shops and markets and buy what you want, pay with your mobile phone and then have it sent home to you. It also claims to include better graphics and easier control and diverse social communities as other advantages.

Second Life never really made it in Korea, and the Koreans remain reluctant to embrace foreign services. One of the reasons for this is the difficulties in understanding the Korean market for foreign companies. Another big problem is the language barriers that comes with the lack of English proficiency and the Korean alphabet Hangul. Therefore, Teo23 have more potential than Second Life since it is adjusting the services to the local markets, something many global companies should learn from.

Several Korean newspapers (such as The Electronic Times) reported today about how the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has made T-DMB one out of four global standards for mobile TV, the others being DVB-H, MediaFLO and 1seg.

All standards have their pros and cons of course. T-DMB is most extensively used and tested, with South Korea being the center of action and the standard is strongly supported by the South Korean government who wants to make it a worldwide standard. However, there are some business model issues that my coming Mobile TV report will point out. DVB-H is the best guess to become a European standard and it is backed by the European Commission, Nokia and others. It is still in an early stage but is currently in a testing phase in 24 countries while Italy and Finland provides a real service. The American MediaFLO is not dependent on previous technologies which can be both beneficiary and a disadvantage but the proprietary issue gives a drawback in some sense. The monopolistic structure around Qualcomm may also be a drawback for the standard when trying to enter new global markets. Japan’s 1seg does not seem to have a global approach and it also has big problems when viewed at speeds above 20 km/h (compared to T-DMB that can even be viewed on the 300 km/h KTX trains)

So while the European countries are to make up their mind to chose between the EC’s favorite DVB-H, the well established and tested T-DMB or the outsider MediaFLO, the European Broadcasting Union made a wise statement when saying that “Technology alone will not decide the future of mobile TV”. South Korea is the front runner and even if Europe decides to go with DVB-H, many lessons can be learned when designing business models, contents and so on. However, it is crucial that the business get started and that mobile TV reach its potential and prime time globally.