Mobile Broadband is the Future

There is some interesting news these days out of the recently concluded World Mobile Congress in Barcelona.  Samsung and the other major manufacturers of smart phones have announced plans to release cheaper smart-phones that will be accessible to the masses of users around the world.  This is hardly surprising since the general logic of the digital information revolution is that semiconductors, screens and other modular devices continue to become more powerful and cheaper over the long run.
Eric Schmidt of Google gave the keynote speech in Barcelona.  As he noted in a recent article for the Harvard Business Review, we are on the cusp of a big mobile revolution that requires three developments.

• Development and deployment of fast mobile networks for the future services.
• Development of mobile money, and
• Increasing the availability of inexpensive smart phones in the poorest parts of the world.

Renewable Energy Exports and Korea's ICT Sector

What does renewable energy have to do with Korea's Information Society?  The answer is partly provided by an interesting article in the Joongang Daily this morning, entitled "Renewable Energy Sector Booms, but also Lags."  According to the Knowledge Economy Ministry and Solar & Energy, total sales in the local renewable energy market reached $7.2 billion last year, a 58 percent surge from the previous year.  Exports jumped 77 percent to $4.5 billion, mainly boosted by demand for locally made solar power generators and related equipment.  The number of firms and employees in the renewable energy sector increased accordingly.   A Ministry official, noting that the renewable energy sector consists mainly of three sectors --solar, wind and biofuel--suggested that “What Korea should focus on is to integrate existing technology from sectors such as semiconductors and liquid-crystal displays with solar power energy, and also shipbuilding with wind power."

Tablets: A New Start in Samsung's Galaxy Lineup?

There is news out of Barcelona about Samsung's new Galaxy smart phone and its new tablet computer, designed to compete with Apple's iPad.  The Joongang Daily covered it, along with much of the trade press.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see full size version), the new Samsung tablet has a 10.1 inch screen, slightly larger than the iPad.  I have long thought that something approximately this size will turn out to be a popular form factor, if it is lightweight enough.   Think of it as a powerful electronic clipboard.  For reading newspapers and magazines, or watching television, the size of these new tablet computers seems almost ideal.  The day is close at hand when many people will carry a smart phone and a tablet computer, both for use at work and on the go, and will choose to use a large or wall-size screen at home.  The ability to synchronize, access and use the same content across all three screen sizes (aka cloud computing) is indeed going to be convenient and commonplace.

Euromonitor on Global Digital Divide: From Korea to Kenya

The Euromonitor blog has a new report on the global digital divide with the accompanying graphic. (click to see full size version).  The measure represented in this graphic is the proportion of households in each country that possess broadband internet-enabled computers.  Nearly all South Korean households do, compared with only about two-thirds of those in the United States.  The report also notes the following main points.

• Access to and use of broadband internet has significant social, economic and political implications.
• While developed economies continue to have a higher rate of broadband internet penetration than developing ones, growth rates are significantly higher in developing regions.

Notably, the report does not deal with the current explosive growth of mobile broadband services via so-called "smart phones."  However, addition of this important factor would only seem to underscore the main points noted above.

Student Recruitment by U.S. Colleges in Northeast Asia

An article in The New York Times caught my eye this morning.   It was entitled "Recruiting in China Pays Off for U.S. Colleges," and there are several reasons I was drawn to it.  First, the story centered on recruitment activities by Grinnell College in Iowa, a small liberal arts school with some strong similarities to St. Olaf College in Northfield Minnesota, where I did my undergraduate study.  Second, the story touched on some issues in student recruitment by U.S. colleges and universities in Asia, an area that was a big part of my responsibilities during the years I worked with the Fulbright Commission in Seoul.
Grinnell is just one of countless American colleges and universities that are seeing an increased number of applications from China, given its booming economy.  As the article notes, this comes at a time when many U.S. schools, especially public universities, are experiencing severe financial difficulties and budget cuts.
One of the issues faced in recruitment of students from China also comes into play in recruitment of students from South Korea to study in the U.S.   As the article notes, many Chinese applicants submit glossy color brochures that contain essays written by or with significant assistance from commercial study abroad agencies.  Along with the role of commercial test-preparation agencies in helping to produce high scores on the TOEFL or other English tests, complicates matters for admissions officers and committees at the U.S. colleges and universities.
The article also notes the importance of recruiting tours of China by Grinnell and other colleges.   By providing an opportunity to meet face-to-face with prospective students and their parents, such tours can help to offset the challenges posed by professionally-prepared essays and English test scores that may be somewhat inflated.
One factor not mentioned in the article is the pervasive new role of the internet in international recruitment.  The rapid convergence of digital media around the internet is opening up a new realm of virtual study fairs, live video conferencing and social networking that is literally re-writing the rules of study abroad recruiting.
Another important factor in college and university recruitment strategies has especially strong relevance for the Northeast Asia countries--China, Korea and Japan.   It is what I originally stated , with Korea in mind, as "Larson's Law on Localization."  The law goes as follows:

To effectively promote a school or other educational products and services in Korea, all key promotional information should be translated into Korean and adapted to local media patterns.

Korea Tops new Government Broadband Index Rankings

The Economist Intelligence Unit has developed a new Government Broadband Index, which shows that Korea ranks number one among the sixteen nations studied.  Not surprisingly, the index is getting attention in the trade press. Using a methodology developed in-house, the index scores countries that have clearly stated objectives on a scale of 1-5 with 5 being the best.  The methodology considers each plan's target speed, universal speed, rollout timeframe, cost and regulatory provisions in order to produce the final score.  Topping the rankings are the countries that have the most ambitious speed, coverage and rollout targets, the most appropriate regulations for realizing targets and fostering a competitive broadband market, and where public funding commitments are putting the least amount of pressure on public-sector finances.  Click on the accompanying graphic to see a full size listing of the country rankings in this study.
Australia was ranked ninth on the list, in part because it plans to spend 7.6% of annual government budgets on the rollout.  Korea, by contrast, plans to spend less than 1% of its budget on the rollout and will instead encourage private sector investment.

3D Smartphones, Yes! 3D Television with Glasses Required, No!

About a week ago I read an article in the Joongang Daily that was completely devoted to a standards dispute between two different standards for 3D television, both of which require that the viewer wear specially-purchased glasses!  It turns out there are two kinds of 3D technology in use:  active shutter glasses and passive polarized glasses.   Read the article if you're interested in further details.
Last year I toured Samsung Electronics headquarters in Suwon with some international visitors and had a chance to personally try out 3D television, with and without glasses.  I will go on record here and now, predicting that any 3D television technology that requires the use of glasses will likely be a non-starter in the global market and may serve a small niche market at best.  For the reasons why, ask anyone who has worn glasses and think about how this relates to the television viewing experience, especially when a person is out of the home or office, and "on the go."
Consequently, I was very interested to read in the Chosun Ilbo that LG Electronics is set to debut a 3D smartphone at the 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona later this month.   It reportedly allows a viewer to see 3D content without glasses, at a distance of 30-50 cm from the screen.  Now this is a technology that makes sense and will seem natural to users.  Expect to see 3D television become popular on smart phones and small devices, long before it (at least the type that requires glasses) hits the big screen.  If you have good arguments against this scenario, I'd like to hear them.

Orascom Comments on Investment in North Korea's Mobile Network

I commented late last month on the meeting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had with Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom.  Today an interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald by Eric Ellis, gives some insight into how Sawiris views his company's investment in North Korea.  Ellis interviewed Sawiris in Egypt in early January.
Orascom, the article noted, is a classic example of a company where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Like North Korea, where the value of the Koryolink JV "is either zero, or $5 billion. If there is reunification, then I will be the incumbent of North Korea, and my value will be something like [South Korean carriers] SK Telecom or Korea Telecom," Sawiris said. "If there is a war and they unify after the war, it is still the same, depending on who wins, of course. And if they take the asset, then it is worth zero. There is no between value [in North Korea] because who will buy? No one else has the relationship that we are building there."

Android and Korea's Handset Makers

There is new evidence that Android will become the dominant mobile platform worldwide, if present trends continue, and this has a powerful effect on Korea's handset makers, led by Samsung and LG.  As reported in The Wall Street Journal and shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see full-size version) shipments of Android-based smartphones surged sevenfold year-on-year in the fourth quarter giving Android a 33% share of the global market.  This year HTC, Samsung and LG Electronics, all of which made late entries into the smartphone market, plan to further their push with the introduction of new Android models in order to meet lofty sales goals.  Samsung reached its goal of selling 20 million smartphones in 2010 and more than 50 percent of those models were Android-based.  LG showed improved sales results from its Android-based Optimus One handset, selling three million units since its launch in the second half of last year.

College Graduate Unemployment Hits Ten-year High

As reported in The Korea Times, data compiled by Statistics Korea show that the number of unemployed college graduates rose to an all time high last year, despite the faster-than-expected economic recovery.  The pattern of unemployment among college graduates over the past ten years is shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full-size version).  Finance ministry officials noted that there is a wide gap between employers demands and college graduates expectations for the level of their jobs.  They also noted that there is a structural problem in the job market--college graduates favor larger companies rather than smaller ones, while the number of jobs available at the former is limited.  Obviously, the growth of one-person enterprises spurred by the popularity of the iPhone and Android phones in Korea, as noted in an earlier post, has not yet had impact on overall employment statistics.
To solve these problems with the jobless growth among the well educated young, the government is seeking ways of restructuring college systems and improving job education programs for students. To promote the restructuring of college and universities, the government will encourage schools to make public the employment rate of their graduates, as well as support active merger and acquisitions of poorly managed schools,a ministry official said.

Hardware vs. Software: Korea's Growing Dependence on Manufacturing

The Joongang Daily and other media are reporting today on a new Bank of Korea report that shows Korea's increasing dependence on its manufacturing sector over the past nine years.  (Click on the accompanying graphic to see a full size version)  Last year the manufacturing industry created total value worth $257.4 billion, or 30.6 percent of the country's total.  This represented the first time that the percentage from manufacturing exceeded 30 percent and it was also a significant increase over earlier years.
In terms of the focus of this blog, it is significant that Korea's manufacturing industries are led by electronics.  In other words, these figures reflect a heavy reliance on the manufacture of semiconductors, mobile handsets, flat screen television sets and computer monitors and other electronic components.  This compares with relatively small production of software and content, which comprises by far the bulk of the global ICT industry.  The Bank of Korea also reported that last year's exports tied to the manufacturing sector were 5.6 times greater than exports by the service sector.
According to an official from the Knowledge Economy Ministry, “There is a need to develop high-value service sectors such as medical, information technology, finance and insurance in addition to low-value service sectors such as retail and lodging.”

Speed: The Giga-Korea Project

Recent posts have noted South Korea's continued world leadership in broadband internet connection speeds, and its demonstration outside the lab of a new, fast advanced-LTE technology.  To place this country's emphasis on internet speed, present and future, in context one needs to consider the newly-announced Giga-Korea project.  Under the banner of "Giga Korea," both the private and public sectors will push ahead with a mega-scale network R&D plan from 2012 to 2020. By means of it, the government intends to turn Korea into the country where the world’s finest mobile telecom service is provided.
As reported by The Electronic Times, the KCC (Korea Communications Commission) and Knowledge Economy Ministry announced the three-phased blueprint to achieve mobile communication leadership for the future on January 26. The participants, including several other ministries, are going to come up with the relevant details by the middle of this year. The total budget for the project amounts to 10 trillion won.

NationwideTest of State-run English Exam

As reported in The Korea Times, a pilot test for the National English Ability Test or NEAT was held in Seoul and 17 cities across the nation on Saturday.  The domestic test, designed to compete with TOEIC and TOEFL, will officially start next year and the government hopes that it will be used as key data for universities and companies to recruit students and employees.  A total of 4,000 applicants took the test, which consisted of four sections -- reading comprehension, listening comprehension, speaking and writing.  NEAT offers three levels of tests, one for adults to evaluate business skills, and the other two for  high school students. The tests have been developed by the Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Korea University, Seoul National University, Sookmyung Women’s University and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

Employment Effects of Mobile Broadband Boom in Korea

An article in The Korea Times caught my eye this morning.  Entitled "Mobile boom proving as economic catalyst?" it offered some details about the impact of the current mobile broadband boom and "smartphone shock," on employment patterns in South Korea.  In particular, government figures show that the number of creative one-person enterprises in the country increased sharply last year on the strength of the explosion in internet devices and content.  According to the Small and Medium Business Administration (SMBA), the nation's one-man enterprises reached 235,000 in 2010, up 15.7 percent from the preceding year, and the number accounts for about 1 percent of the economically active population.
The number of people who want to develop applications has been on the increase, said an instructor at a local information technology educational institution, which offers an education service on applications. Reportedly, those who are familiar with computer programming can develop an application after a one-month course.
The government report also said that more than 60 percent of those who established one-man creative enterprises had earned bachelor's degrees or higher academic qualifications.

Korea Tests Operational 4G Mobile System

Korea has become the first country in the world to demonstrate a high-capacity, super speed mobile telecommunications system outside of laboratory conditions.  As reported by Yonhap, the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) tested a Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-Advanced) system. The accompanying photo of the test was published in The Korea Herald. (click to see a larger version)The technology acquired meets 95 percent of the requirements needed for a functional 4G mobile communications system, he said, adding technologies not yet developed must wait for the creation of a worldwide standard on 4G telecommunications that is expected to be set by the International Telecommunication Union in April.  The research took over five years and cost ETRI an estimated 64 billion won (53 million dollars) to complete.  According to Yonhap, ETRI reported acquiring 24 patents related to LTE-Advanced and has applied for intellectual property protection on 500 processes learned during the research and development stage. South Korean companies may hold least 23 percent of all patent rights on 4G communications technology, up from 19 percent for 3.9G and 10 percent for 3G wideband code division multiple access, it added.

Korea Still Has the World's Fastest Internet

Akamai is about to release another of its quarterly "State of the Internet" reports and it shows that South Korea continues to have the world's highest average internet access speeds, and by quite some margin.  As noted in a report by Fortune magazine, South Koreans hook into the internet at an average speed of 14 megabits per second, or seven times the global average.  We visited the topic of internet speed in a post last month.  As MikeinSeoul noted in his comments, the relatively small geographical size of Korea has something to do with these speeds.  Along with its mountainous geography and relatively small size, South Korea is highly urbanized with a very large proportion of the population living in high rise apartment complexes that are connected to the nationwide fiber optic networks.
Having reiterated this much, there is more to the Korean story than simply its size and geographic advantages.  South Korea is slightly larger than the state of Indiana, yet it has much faster internet connection speeds than Indiana.  My forthcoming book with Dr. OH, Myung, Digital Development in Korea:  Building an Information Society, addresses some of the reasons why Korea today possesses such advanced and fast digital networks.  Policies and persistent long term investment in building networks clearly had something to do with it, and they began back in the early 1980s.
For the fun of it, I just did two speed tests, using the tool that is freely available on speedtest.net.  The first (results in the top graphic) showed the speed of my connection from rural Gangwon Province to a server in Seoul.  The second tested the upload and download speed to a server in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  Just thought some of you might be interested.  (Click on either of the graphics to enlarge.)

An Interesting Bit of Information about North Korean Telecommunications

Bits and pieces of information are about all that one receives about the state of telecommunications networks in North Korea.   However, it was very interesting to read that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has recently met with and hosted a dinner for Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom, which has been providing mobile phone service in the North in cooperation with a local company since 2008.  The official North Korean news agency, according to channelnewsasia.com reported that Kim "warmly welcomed his DPRK (North Korea) visit taking place at a time when Orascom's investment is making successful progress in different fields of the DPRK, including telecommunications." Orascom said last year that mobile phone subscriptions in North Korea had more than quadrupled in the space of a year -- to 301,199 by the end of September 2010 from 69,261 a year earlier.

iPhone "Invasion" of South Korea? Some Background

The Los Angeles Times story entitled "Apple's iPhone is Invading South Korea, home of Samsung's Galaxy S," is getting quite a bit of attention these days, at least in the blogosphere.  It will not surprise readers of this blog that I cannot resist commenting on the article.  For one thing, the "invasion" is already over, having taken place more than a year ago.  Just use the search feature to the right and enter "iPhone" and you'll see that I began posting on this topic back in 2008, over a year before the iPhone finally arrived here.  By that time, it had become very apparent that something was amiss in South Korea's mobile market.  It was missing out on a major global trend toward mobile broadband, epitomized by the Apple iPhone.  Even when the iPhone finally arrived in South Korea near the end of 2009, there was another months-long delay before Android-based phones began to appear.
So, it is difficult to conceive of the Apple iPhone's entry into the Korean market as described in the L.A. Times article as a "bold offensive by a foreign competitor invading its lucrative home turf with a breakthrough product."   In fact, the iPhone arrived in Korea about two and a half years after its introduction in the United States!
Some of the reasons why it took so long for the iPhone to reach this market have been explored in earlier posts on this blog.  However, it is now safe to suggest that this delay did not necessarily work toward the best overall interests of either consumers here or the large mobile handset manufacturers like Samsung and LG.  In fact, as noted in an earlier post, Korean exports of mobile handsets took a huge hit because of the delayed transition to smart phones.  Of course, the drop in exports was partly compensated for by the fact that most of the high value-added parts in the iPhone are manufactured by Korean companies.
In late 2009 when the iPhone arrived in the Korean market, many industry estimates suggested that there might be 700,000 or even a million customers for the new phone.  In fact two million iPhone handsets have been sold in just over a year since its introduction.
The larger impact of the iPhone in Korea can only be understood by looking at the broad transition that is now underway here toward mobile broadband.  In important respects, this development was artificially delayed by the obstacles that prevented a more timely arrival of the iPhone and Android phones.  Clear evidence of the rapid transition to mobile broadband can be found in various places, including the rapid uptake of Facebook and Twitter here, as touched on recently.
Many in Korea, perhaps led by top executives of KT, would suggest that the arrival of the iPhone and the accompanying "smartphone shock" were less of an invasion than a blessing or "wakeup call" for South Korea's market and its exporters.