Samsung and the world’s largest conglomerate GE (General Electrics) are joining hands in the field of smart grid, and beginning a “Pilot Project” in the premise of technology research and business development.

Smart grid has currently been drawing the focus of the world’s IT industries. It revolutionizes the electricity provider relations to its consumers into a two-way communication that makes the allocation and utilization of energy much more efficient. Smart grid can also incorporate the use of solar and wind energy into the electrical system, which further adds to its attractiveness in part of the green technology schema.

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Korea’s Accelerating Smart Grid Power Supply Outlook

Korea’s smart grid market has deemed very promising. The “2010 Global Smart Grid Forum” was successfully hosted in Seoul on January 20, where the President of the American Smart Grid Association, Guido Bartles ceaselessly spoke of the fast development of Korea’s smart grid industry, which has been much due to the readily competitive ICT and infra in Korea. He commented that “This is possible due to the strong infrastructure set by KEPCO (Korea Electric Power Corporation); the cooperative relations between the Korean government, industries, and universities; and Korea’s unparallel internet broadband speed.” Furthermore, the Korean government has been vigorously pushing for smart grid development as part of the 2008 Green Energy project.

However, though the current usage of smart grid in Korea had begun effectively since 2000, it had been mostly limited to higher voltage areas such as factories, buildings and apartments.

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Homeowner / Retail Customer Premise

With this joint collaboration between Samsung and GE, Korea’s smart grid market is expected to further infiltrate into lower voltage appliances such as air conditioners, lighting and television. “Smart home appliances” will be one of the focus projects in this joint collaboration, as Samsung is in charge of a substantial home appliance development division. Samsung and GE both expect a win-win situation with this deal, as GE has been seeking to expand its smart grid industry into Europe and other regions, and Samsung believes that this deal will help them improve their technical sophistication and also be helpful for their future advancement into the U.S. smart grid market. Furthermore, this deal has created a positive buzz for the smart grid related companies in Korea, who are growingly seeing the promising future of smart grid and Korea.

Amongst the 3W mobile networks available in Korea - WCDMA, WiBro, and WiFi - WiFi had not been receiving much attention from the mobile business circles. However, since the inception of iPhone and the following smartphones, WiFi has become the critical resource of competitive advantage for mobile network operators to serve their smartphone users. In particular, the WiFi became one of the most conflictual policy issues for Korea’s local government election coming up early this June. Concerned with earning the favor and votes of the public, politicians have been insisting on the free use of WiFi in public places. However, each related stakeholder clearly has different perspective on this matter.

Policy makers are insisting on making WiFi a free public network to improve the benefits of public interests. They asserted that free mobile network infrastructure is necessary to boost the use of smartphones. Further regarding the investment costs for the policy makers, WiFi has the most appropriate budget option compared with other W networks.

The industry on the other hand showed different reactions. KT, who has already made substantial investments on WiFi coverage throughout the nation, strictly disagreed with the free use of WiFi. KT strongly asserted that it will discourage investment on mobile network from private sectors and also that WiFi has great deal of security issues, which should be dealt by expert operators rather than local government. They instead suggested that the vitalization of smartphone usage can be achieved through inexpensive price plans. However, SKT conversely insisted that local government should cooperate with telcos in its use within certain public areas and facilities, like the case with street lights, in order to avoid overlapping investments.

Lastly, the KCC (Korea Communication Committee) emphasized their policy principle that government’s role should lie in promoting, rather than creating, an efficient market. In other words, WiFi should be built based on market competition rather than by local government’s sole initiative. But they partially accepted the open use of WiFi network in cases with public benefits such as education or accident prevention. 

Telecommunication infrastructure should serve to benefit the public by its nature. However, by over-emphasizing on public benefits, the private sector will likely lose their motivations for making investment. WiFi will play a critical role for the future mobile internet ecosystem, especially concerning the spread of smart devices like smartphones. Hence, the policy on WiFi should not be decided based on politicians’ own interests. Rather, it should be by balancing between market mechanism and public benefits, and vigorously evaluated the feasibility of execution for each action.  

Clockwise: Sudden Attack, Dungeon & Fighter, Counterstrike Online: Zombie, Freestyle

It is no news that Korea has been a market leader in production and distribution of online games. Korea’s online games are known to be highly adaptive, addictive, and profitable. With its efficient production model and long term revenue model from recurring user fees, it stands quite competitive against console games which have been the dominant game form for decades. Already vastly popular in Japan, US, China and other Asian countries, Korea’s online games have also been increasingly gaining ground in Europe and South America. Hence Korean games make up more than 50% of the total online gaming market.

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Within Korea’s online game Mecca, there are also those games that take the spotlight, those gamer’s favorites that have been ceaselessly on the top spots.
The most Popular Online games in Korea Top 10 for 2nd week of May are:
1. Sudden Attack                                      - FPS
2. Dungeon and Fighter                             - Action RPG
3. Aion: Tower of Eternity                          - MMORPG
4. World of Warcraft                                  - MMORPG
5. Maple Story                                          - MMORPG
6. Fifa Online 2                                         - e-Sports (Soccer/football)
7. Freestyle                                              - e-Sports (Basketball)
8. Lineage                                                - MMORPG
9. Counterstrike Online: Zombie Scenario   - FPS
10. Lineage 2                                           - MMORPG

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This ranking is from Game Meca  Online Games, which is based on the game awareness and game access traffic data aggregated from popular search portals, PC game room access time, online gaming traffic data, game website visitors, and Game Meca user rankings.
As you can see most of the games are categorized amongst one of three forms, FPS (First Person Shooter), MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online role play game) and e-Sports (electronic sports). It is no secret that Korea has been a leading nation of online multiplayer games, but these games have been refusing to give out their top spot for months!

MMORPG games such as Aion, WOW, Maple Story and Lineage seem to be filling up most of the spots on the list. However, maintaining the #1 slot consistently for over a year is ‘Sudden Attack’, a free-to-play multiplayer first person shooter online game. I had introduced it in as earlier article for its placement of celebrity characters such as Rain and Jessica Gomez to further promote its game attraction.

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eSports also seem to be also gaining more ground. ‘Fifa Online 2’, the online football games has always been in the leading spot, making headlines as a representative strategic collaboration between Korea’s number one game company Neowiz and the world renown software producer EA(Electronic Arts). And with the upcoming World Cup 2010, Fifa Online 2 can expect more attention to its way. However, for games such as ‘Freestyle’, the multiplayer online basketball game is one of the only games to recently make its way on to the top 10 list, going up four spots from the previous week. Also another e-Sports game, Pro Baseball Manager has made it a huge leap over eleven spots to hold its place on #12 this week.
It appears like FPS, MMORPG and e-Sports games are going to remain on the forefront of Korea’s online gaming industry, the apple of the eye for Korean gamers, and likely to continue stirring the interests of international game developers.