The Korean Market for Mobile Services – A window to 3G
The future 2.5G and 3G services market.
It is not a secret that the Korean mobile market is unique. The implementation of advanced mobile technologies and mobile networks giving customers 144 Kb downstream, make Korea a huge market for advanced mobile services that in many ways will be very similar to what we will see in our future 2.5G and 3G markets.
In the GSM world, the only mobile service that has had success is the SMS. The introduction of WAP had almost no impact and many service providers and mobile operators are still searching for today’s “Killer Application” to create traffic for future mobile networks.
Things look a lot different in Korea. For a number of years, the operators have had a strategy on how to develop and market mobile services. The implementation of network technologies with download speeds of up to 144 Kb means that the application developers and the service providers have already enjoyed marketing and selling mobile services for the last couple of years – services that we almost certainly will not see before we have a fully functioning 3G market.
Strand Consult has spent almost 9 months analysing the Korean mobile market, met with all the players and seen how they work. We have described the Korean mobile services market in detail, including:
·Which services the customers are buying today and what future services are expected
·What influence the different mobile technologies have on the mobile services market
·Analysing the used technologies including WAP, Mobile Explorer, Java and BREW
·Describing the business models that the Korean mobile services market is based on
·Looking at location based services, mail services and many other services that people are still only talking about elsewhere
·Looking at M-Commerce – which is being used daily by thousands of customers in Korea
·How the many different terminals, with cameras and colour screens have affected mobile services
Korea’s mobile operators and service providers have proved that the more advanced terminals and services have had a positive affect on the operators business case. Did you know that in Korea a 2G customer spends 1.9 Euro, a 2.5G customer 4.6 Euro and a 2.5G customer with a colour screen 7.6 Euro on wireless Internet a month? How have they achieved these outstanding figures? What have the mobile operators, the service providers and the other mobile players done to deserve such high rewards?
If you are a player in the marketplace for mobile services and want inspiration for which services you should be planning on in the future, we would recommend buying this unique report. Korea is in many ways a market that we all can learn from. The combination of operators with the correct strategies, professional content providers and a technological platform that allows new and very advanced services, has created a unique market for mobile services.
