The perils of over reliance on manufactured products exports in ICT

My lack of posts this month is largely because I've been working on the second edition of my book, Digital Development in Korea (with Dr. Oh Myung).  Depending on Routledge's production schedules, it should appear in 2019. One chapter of the book deals with long term trends in Korea's ICT exports, including the "super cycle" in semiconductor (integrated circuit) exports during 2017 and 2018.  Consequently I was struck by yesterday's article in The Korea Times entitled "Samsung, SK Hynix bracing for global chip downturn."

Industry data show that the global market for semiconductors has already begun to decline, as shown in the graphic (click for a full size version).  The article quotes a Statistics Korea executive as saying that 

"Orders from data centers have recently been falling off while smartphone production has been stagnating, resulting in falling demand for DRAM for servers and memory chips for mobile phones."  It also notes that the downturn in the chip market is likely to deal a blow to the Korean economy because semiconductor exports account for more than 20 percent of total exports.
The Korea Times article seems like a fitting topic for my lone post of December.  As the year comes to a close, it is well for Korean policymakers to remember that more than three-quarters of the global market for ICT products is made up of software and services.  The challenge for this country in 2019 and beyond lies in those areas, not in continued reliance on hardware manufacturing and export.

Bixpo Exhibition: Energy transition and digital transformation

The Korea Joongang Daily carried an interesting article today on the Bitgaram International Expo of Electric Power Technology (Bixpo), a forum organized by Kepco, in Gwangju on Wednesday. “Power companies around the world are facing an enormous historic change called an ‘energy paradigm shift,’” said Kepco CEO Kim Jong-kap during the opening of Bixpo. “The first major paradigm shift is the digital transformation, which will mean that our children will experience a world that is completely different from the one we have been living in.
“Big data, artificial intelligence [AI], the Internet of Things and other core technologies of the fourth industrial revolution are rapidly tearing down industrial boarders,” Kim said.
He said that such changes are forcing the electric power sector to be interconnected and fuse with other industries that it previously hadn’t thought of, such as the automotive, finance, construction and communications industries.
I'm teaching a graduate seminar this semester on "Digital technologies for disaster risk reduction," and we are discussing all of the technologies mentioned in the Joongang Daily article.   Personally I would argue that the industrial convergence noted by CEO Kim is part of the continuing third industrial revolution, driven by digital technologies, rather than a fourth such revolution as promoted by the World Economic Forum.

Seoul has the most economic clout of any capital city

With half of South Korea's population and a high concentration of its top industries, universities and schools at all levels, the following chart from Statista stands to reason.

Samsung Electronics growth stalls

As reported by the Korea Joongang Daily, Samsung Electronics growth (operating profit) stalled in the second quarter of 2018.  As noted in the article "The tech giant reported Tuesday that its operating profit for the April-June period was 14.87 trillion won ($13.27 billion), up 5.7 percent from the same period a year ago but down 4.9 percent from the previous quarter. Revenue for the second quarter tallied 58.48 trillion won, down 4.1 percent on year and 3.4 percent on quarter."  As shown in the graphic (click for a full size version), memory chips continued their strong performance while sales of smartphones and displays declined.

Speed matters: July 2018 update

OpenSignal just published an article/post entitled "Explaining the huge gap between fastest and slowest 4G upload speeds in the US."  As readers of this blog will know, I've posted frequently over the years (check these out) on the importance of speed (a.k.a. bandwidth) on the Internet.
The OpenSignal article noted that average 4G upload speed in the U.S. during the period from March 1 to May 29, 2018 ranged from 2.5 Mbps to 7.5 Mbps.  (click on the graphic for a full size version)

This made me curious about the upload and download speeds from my office here in the Incheon Global Campus.  So I did a speed test (click on the graphic for a full size version of the screen capture).
Draw your own conclusions, but I would submit to you once again that "speed matters"!