Apple Bores a Big Hole in Korea's "Walled Garden"

As a short follow-up to my earlier post, there is an excellent treatment of the current situation at this link. Enjoy.

The Challenge for Korea's Mobile Telecoms Sector

Today many Korea-related blogs were filled with speculation that Korea Telecom was planning to introduce the Apple iPhone in Korea next month.  This was quickly dampened when a KT official apparently announced that there was no such plan.  However, the excitement generated points to the growing challenge faced by South Korea in its mobile telecommunications sector and, by extension, in the global marketplace.  As noted in earlier posts on this topic, several things are becoming clear:

• The mobile market worldwide is on the verge of a massive shift in emphasis from handsets to software and services, as epitomized by the Apple iPhone and Google's Android software platform.
• Korea's handset makers, led by Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are major players in the global handset market, with much to gain or lose from the massive shift over to hand held computer/communication devices.
• As noted in a recent Reuters analysis, Korean mobile communications service providers have concentrated overwhelmingly on Korean-language services, which don't easily translate into the global market which demands English and other languages.

Samsung is reportedly planning to open up an App store later this year, but will it be a global app store, in competition with iPhone and especially Android applications?  It should be and my recommendation and hope would be that both Samsung and LG invest heavily in making the Android platform successful, here in Korea and around the world.  The rationale for quickly releasing a state-of-the-art Android phone capable of toggling between English and Korean seems obvious.  With some of the world's best mobile networks and the impending transition for some customers to WiBro, Korea is easily the world's largest national test-market for new mobile services and software.  Encouraging competition and innovation in that market is what will serve Korean handset manufacturers and telecommunications providers best in the long run and in an increasingly global marketplace.

Two of My Books Are Going Online Soon

This post is a bit more personal than my usual posts on this blog, but no less illustrative of the rapidly-emerging and converging digital information age in which we live.   Yesterday I walked across the street to the DHL office and shipped new copies of two books to Google. Television's Window on the World:  International Affairs Coverage on the U.S. Networks (Ablex: 1984) was based on my doctoral dissertation at Stanford.   Thanks in large part to an outstanding group of faculty on my dissertation committee, the study seems to have stood the test of time and become a benchmark that is frequently cited by younger researchers.  The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea (Oxford University Press, 1995) was the outcome of two years of research in Korea, supported by Dacom Corporation and with cooperation from a host of government, industry and academic colleagues here.
I'm pleased to announce that the publishers of both these books have reverted copyright to me as author.  I intend to use all of the services of the Google Book Search Partner program to make 100 percent of the content of these books browseable over the internet and to make them searchable via my personal website, www.jamesflarson.com  How quickly you will see them there depends on how long it takes Google to scan and process these volumes upon receipt.  Of course, I'll announce their availability here and on my personal site, with links to the pages that will allow online reading, searching or download of these books.