With the wave of iPad fever, many eyes are on the eBook business. In Korea, competition amongst the four major online ebook stores – Yes24, Interpark, Kyobo, and Aladdin – have been heating up at full throttle.

Currently, Yes24 holds the No.1 spot in Korea’s online bookstores, according to market shares.

Yes24’s sales transactions have gone up 19.3% to $115.5 million since the previous year. It also holds 30%  of Korea’s ePub (electronic publication) shares, which had been jointly developed last year - by Yes24, Libro, Bandinlunis, YPbooks, and two publishering companies Hangilasa and Minumsa - to secure eBooks for the fast growing eReader market.

Yes24 has three strategies for their eBook business which are: ‘openness and collaboration’ between Yes24’s eBook contents and eReader producers, the attempt to give online customers the comfort of actual bookstore experiences, and the establishment of a new platform with eBook publishers for future development plans.

‘Openness’ and ‘collaboration’ means that Yes24 is looking to make its eBooks available for purchase on as many  eReaders (hardware devices for eBook contents) as possible, rather than investing in creating its own eReader device, as Amazon did with ‘Kindle’ and Interpark with ‘Biscuit’(which are currently troubled by the launch of the tablet PC-iPad). Yes 24’s eBooks are already available on eReaders such as ‘PAGEOne’ by NextPapyrus and the ‘Samsung SNE-60’. Further, it is also in negotiation with other eReaders such as Iriver’s ‘Story’ and Bookcubenetwork’s ‘Bookcube’ .

Yes24 online bookstore also pursues to provide customers with some of the benefits and comforts of actual bookstores. It has made Yes24’s searchbar data convenient and easily to browse, and further made the first 20pages free of charge so that people could skim through the first few pages before deciding upon a purchase as they often do in actual bookstores. On the other hand, this could also give online users a chance to get accustomed to or give them a taste of what it is like to read pages of an eBook off a screen. Moreover, unlike most other online bookstores that give excessive discounts, which can sometimes increase sale but in turn reduce profits, Yes24 has positioned its competitiveness in quality services such as its one-day delivery promise.

Yes24 is further planning to develop a platform to support eBook publishers, perhaps to turn around the serious lack of bestseller ebooks, which are the cash cows for ebook business. Amazon’s Kindle had been particularly successful by putting a lot of focus on new and popular books which became the bestselling ebooks. We can expect Yes24 to be making such developments in the future and overcome merely being an “eBook factory”.

KT has announced on the 13th that it has commercialized Korea’s first 3D Building Management System (BMS) in collaboration with KSIC (Korea Spatial Information & Communication, a SME specializing in SW).

This 3D BMS project can be called “Smart Building,” one of KT’s S.M.ART 6 sectors. As mentioned in recent posts, SMART is one of the three integrative B2B strategy that KT, LGT, and SKT had set out, in order to step beyond its saturated Telco market. (The other sectors of ‘Smart 6′ include Smart Enterprise, Smart SOHO/SMB, Smart Government, Smart Zone, and Smart Green.)

 
‘KT Smart Tower’ control room, operating agents working with the 3D BMS

The BMS is computer-based maintenance system that controls and monitors the building’s mechanical and electrical equipment, which is a critical component in managing the building’s energy demand. With the help of KSIC, the gathered database of a building facility is turned into a 3D GIS(Geographic Information System). Now with real-time 3D video feeds of the building facilities, building managers can more effectively maintain the building throughout its lifecycle.

With 3D BMs, not only is real-time monitoring of individual facilities possible, but the wiring and plumbing system, which are not usually visible to the naked eye, can also be identified. Hence, immediate detection and correction of problems will be made possible, which can efficiently reduce accidents and safety hazards that occur within building facilities.

Currently, the 3D BMS solution is being tested in KT’s Smart Tower, a 12 storey building with 5 basement floors located in Gwacheon, Kyunggi-do, which is also apart of KT’s smart building business.
KT is planning to set out its BIM solution as the flagship of the smart building business future, with the IT-Construction synergy effect between Korea’s U-city business (building cities managed entirely by IT infrastructure) and the Smart BMS business.

Moreover, the Korean government has recently been promoting to further the 3D BMS solution into preempting the market in Building Information Modeling (BIM) for public buildings. BIM is a process that involves generating and managing real-time, three-dimensional building modeling data to increase productivity in building design and construction. However, there are yet to be buildings based on BIM solutions in Korea for now.

SNS has already been popular in Korea with Cyworld, which has existed in Korea since 1999. Now, globally representative SNS services such Facebook and later Twitter has begun to enter the Korean market. However, Facebook had failed to be widely adopted in Korea, while the more recent emergence of Twitter has been starting to gain ground. I believe this pattern is likely to continue for both Facebook and Twitter, because SNS rely on the spread of active users, and also partly due to the language barrier of “English”. However, in the long term, SNS in Korea should not and cannot remain remote from the English based worldwide SNS, hence it is early to determine the ultimate future of global SNS platforms such as Facebook and Twitter in Korea.

Why not Facebook?
Despite the fact that Facebook has more than 400 million users worldwide, it has faced a tough game in Korea due to the already dominant SNS, Cyworld. SNS popularity relies on the quantity of active users available within the network, and Cyworld has certainly managed to account for most of the Korean users. It has also been made to fit the taste of the Korean majority with decorateable avatars and homely features that are simple and attractive. Moreover, because people have already become accustomed to Cyworld with ready established networks, they find it cumbersome to readopt the facets of Facebook which are quite different and hence ‘complicated’ for Korean users. Hence, switching over Korea’s already massive Cyworld users base to Facebook would be difficult and unlikely in the foreseeable future.

Cyworld (above) vs Facebook (below)

Then, why yes to Twitter?
Twitter on the other hand has been gaining ground from quite early on. There had been no previous Korean SNS that gave such microblogging services that allow quick, short, no-pressure, real time sharing of information before Tweeting emerged in Korea. Furthermore the rising spread of Smartphone usage in Korea has made Tweeting much easier and mobile, hence encouraging instaneous posting of Tweets.
Later Korean versions, such as Naver’s Me2day and Twittpop(an Korean SNS app) has been developed. The Twittpop app even has added features such as posting through smartphone pen recognitions and GPS use. However, Twitter has already gained significant ground with the Korean user base, and though the localized version seem to be viable, it is perhaps more likely that Koreans are going to continue to build on the internationally large user base of Twitter. It could be one of the few global SNS to succeed in Korea in a long time, since blogs first began. Twitter has been already formatted for the Korean language, and especially with notable expansion of Tweets during Korea’s recent election season(an attempt to revive Obama’s Twitter effect), a significant number of tweeters have been accumulated in Korea. Many Koreans also have much interest in following up on international(or Hollywood) celebrities, politicians, and figures, and because the Tweet are much shorter, lighter, and easier to follow, Twitter perhaps reduces the language barrier.

Twitter (above) vs Me2Day (below)

What should the future for SNS in Korea be?
In Korea, local internet services are currently very competitive and dominant; Cyworld over Facebook, Naver over Google. Perhaps because those local services almost perfectly meet up to the preferences and taste of Koreans, and partly due to the differentiated structure of search engine in Korea that is limited to its associated data base, instead of the entire web.
However, as a tech-savvy, developed country, Korea’s SNS culture should not and cannot stay remote and away from the English based worldwide SNS platforms. People will increasingly seek to go beyond Korea, and connect with people on an international level. Even though, the English language barrier has made many Koreans reluctant to use English based SNS until today, there have been increments in people who are willing to take that chance. Moreover, with an almost obsession in learning and improving one’s English in Korea, there still remains to be promising possibility for global SNS such as Facebook in the longer term. Hence though Twitter seem to be more likely of success in the Korean market compared to Facebook, ultimately global SNS should be adopted in the future of Korea.