Forbes has recently made a special report “Window Into The Wireless Future” about wireless technologies in South Korea. I am sure that it can be an interesting and insightful reference to those who are interested in the Korean TMT(Technology, Media, Telecoms) sector. I hope you enjoy reading this report, and if you have any questions regarding the contents of the report, you can email me and I will reply to your questions as early as possilbe.

Window Into The Wireless Future

Written by Elizabeth Woyke

Forbes travels to Korea for a peek at how the world of wireless is evolving

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RINGING IN THE FUTURE

The Future of Wireless

In Korea, it’s difficult to talk technology without encountering the word “ubiquitous.” Technologists here attach the term to words as varied as “life,” “computing” and “community.” The message: Every technology in Korea, from broadband to digital television, is designed to be always on, always with you…..

Why Korea Isn’t Rushing To 4G

Super-wired South Korea easily outranks the U.S. in most measures of broadband. But that might just change. In a surprising twist, with help from Korean companies, the U.S. could win the race to upgrade cellular networks to faster mobile broadband speeds…..

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PHONE INNOVATIONS TODAY

Cool Phones Out Of Reach (In America)

Smitten with LG’s ingeniously-named “Ice Cream” phone? Charmed by Samsung’s playful “Haptic Pop” handset? Be prepared to wait–in vain–since neither phone is slated for a U.S. launch…..

Creating LG’s Watch Phone

Few phones have fired up the public’s imagination like LG Electronics’ Watch Phone. The device, which packs advanced cellphone features into a wristwatch, was a hit at January’s Consumer Electronics Show and this week’s Mobile World Congress exhibition, where LG’s mobile head, Skott Ahn, used it to call Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer. Mobile operator Orange recently committed to selling the phone in Europe later this year…..

LG’s Weapon: Netbooks

In the U.S., consumer electronics maker LG Electronics is best known for its cellphones and flat-screen TVs. By this summer, the company hopes to make a name for itself in PCs too…..

Favorite Phone Fruits: Apple Vs. BlackBerry

South Korea would appear to be the ideal market for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry. After all, the country manufactures and consumes some of the world’s most sophisticated mobile technology. Koreans are big into mobile messaging. And the nation is wired for fast, 3G cellular service…..

Samsung, LG Design Face-off

The Korean electronics giants are currently ranked No. 2 and No. 3 worldwide in cellphone shipments after leader Nokia(NOK-news-people). Both are betting on design to keep them in the top three globally, and maybe even catapult them into the lead spot…..

Korea’s Pantech Rings Up U.S. Sales

It’s been a whirlwind year for Pantech Wireless. The Atlanta-based subsidiary of South Korean cellphone maker Pantech Group has released six phones in the last 12 months, including four in the last quarter. AT&T is promoting two of the handsets in TV spots as ideal holiday gifts. Patrick Beattie, Pantech Wireless’ vice president of marketing and sales, says the company has never been busier…..

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RINGING IN SOCIAL CHANGE

The Struggles of OhMyNews

Why pay for a pack of professional journalists when you can get by with gifted amateurs? Established in February 2000 by former investigative magazine journalist Yeon Ho Oh, OhmyNews is South Korea’s grand experiment in citizen journalism. It was touted by organizations from the BBC to Time magazine as the future of the media industry…..

OhMyNews Chooses Influence Over Income

South Korean citizen journalism site OhmyNews is in the red, but says its mission is on track. “OhmyNews is more concerned with being a social and media movement than a business,” says Jean K. Min, the site’s international communications director. “Our goal is to empower citizens.”…..

Grappling With Internet Addiction

Korea is a textbook example. The nation enjoys some of the fastest and cheapest broadband in the world. It also continually battles the adverse effects of being so wired, starting with Internet addiction and cybercrime….

Korea Bridges Digital Divide

Dr. Yeongi Son has a message for President Obama: If you’re serious about making broadband a priority, establish an agency dedicated to digital divide issues…..

Greening Korea

Unlike its neighbor Japn, South Korea is rarely associated with environmentalism. But without fanfare, some of Korea’s leading corporations are embracing renewable energy technologies…..

SKT has called on the government to reject a plan by KT to merge with its wireless affiliate KTF, saying the merger will create a telecom giant and make it impossible to compete fairly.

From SKT’s point of view:

The KT/KTF merger will make an interactive transition of KT’s dominent position in the fixed-line telephone market into the mobile phone market. Becasue of that, the underlying competition in terms of developing new technologies or products in the telecom market will disappear. Just the competition in marketing will become severe, which means most investment, which is supposed to be made in R&D, is most likely to be used for markeitng purposes.

From KT’s point of view:

As Korean telecom market has been completely saturated, telecom operators are struggling to find a new way of services more appealing to customers, which is in line with the global trend in fixed-mobile convergence. The KT/KTF merger will enable KT to provide various converged products that customers can certainly benefit from at lower price so that the competion in Korean telecom market can lead to cheaper but high-quality services to customers.

We will see how Korea Communications Commission(KCC), the country’s broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, responds to it.

Following the Broadband Convergence Network program (initiated by the Ministry of Information and Communication), Yujin Robot, Spread Telecom and KTF have worked together to create a new domestic robot. Based on a vacuum cleaner model, like the iClebo, this prototype is able to communicate with your mobile phone, in order to let you control it, and send you a text message when somebody comes into your house. This is another step in the government initiative to make robots a common tool, in the everyday life, available to a large array of people. The country heralds a goal of a 100% robot market penetration by 2020.

Tellingly, using the near universal broadband access, Korean companies are making robots closer to people, through this so-called control of robots : we can follow the robot journey in the house, and the robot can help us staying closer to our home. Therefore, the technological convergence is also a distance convergence. New technologies help you to reduce the distance between you and your house or relatives. In Korea, new technologies are progressively integrated in the Korean everyday life, by addressing emotional and personal matters, as our home security. This is true for the robots, but this is also true for the mobile phone , as I said yesterday.