Korean Government to Set Up App Store

Why am I not surprised to read in The Korea Times that the Korean government is planning to set up an online app store?  One reason is an incident I vividly remember that occurred sometime last year.  My wife and I were waiting at a bus stop to catch the airport bus on one of our trips to the United States.  Right in front of us, a policeman stopped a black sedan that had made an illegal U-turn a few hundred yards up the street.  However, instead of pulling out a pad of paper to issue a ticket, the policeman punched some numbers into his mobile phone and showed it to the driver.  Within a few minutes the whole process of issuing a traffic ticket was finished, with absolutely no uncertainty about the identity of the driver and other relevant details.
In certain respects, South Korea is leading the world in e-government.  The Korea Times article reports that the government is now looking to set up a government "app store" to improve the distribution of public information such as weather forecasts, traffic updates and job openings.  An official from the Ministry of Public Administration said that the plan is to launch the app store as an internet site and then expand it to mobile platforms.  By allowing the public access to and use of public information the private sector will be given the means to create more value-added services.
It will be most interesting to see how the government's plans work out.

Forecast for Touch-Screen Mobile Phone Growth

Here in Korea, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and other companies are racing to develop advanced touch-screen technologies in the wake of the Apple iPhone's debut.  And they should be racing.
Back in December of last year, shortly after I had purchased my Apple iPhone 3GS, I wrote a post talking about capacitive versus resistive touch screens.  The capacitive touch screens, led by the iPhone are the ones most prized by consumers because of their speed and responsiveness.
Not surprisingly, the market for touch-screen mobile phones is projected to expand rapidly over the next several years.  A recent study by Displaybank (click to see a full size version of the accompanying graphic) suggests that one in four mobile phones will be touch-screen models by 2013.  I expect that most of these will be capacitive.  As the processor speed of these phones increases, along with improvements in the touch technology, they will give users a sense of wielding the power to instantly retrieve and manipulate vast amounts of information with simple taps, swipes and other gestures of the thumb and fingers.  These are indeed handheld computers, empowered by GPS, digital compass, other sensors and most importantly, high speed internet access.

SK Telecom Still Doesn't Get It: Smartphones and VOIP Services

It appears that the leadership of SK Telecom, South Korea's leading mobile service provider, have not yet comprehended what is happening to the mobile communications market here, and the implications for their business, both medium and long term.  As noted in the Joongang Daily, beginning next month SK Telecom will start charging customers for voice services on a per-second basis, rather than in 10-second increments.  This will make Korea the fifth country to have such a charging system and will save SK Telecom users an estimated $14.5 million every month.  However, at the same time SK Telecom announced that it would continue to block use of VOIP services on its smartphones!
What is even more remarkable than the announcement as reported in the Korea Herald,  is the company's reasoning that allowing its smartphone subscribers access to cheap internet calls using services like Skype will "deal a blow to its revenue."
One probable result of SK Telecom's policy, if indeed they stick with it, will be an increasing number of its customers who drop SK Telecom's service in favor of Korea Telecom.   That's what I did late last November and I haven't had a single regret.  Skype, by the way, was one of the first applications I loaded on my iPhone 3GS and it works great!
The leadership of Korea Telecom seems to have a better grasp of the revolutionary changes underway in mobile communications and greeted the SK announcement by saying that it would continue to focus on reducing mobile internet charges rather than on calling tariffs.  KT is also moving broadly to offer useful content and applications, which will no doubt generate handsome revenues.  SK Telecom would be wise to do the same, rather than cling to dwindling voice revenues as a source of future revenue.

More on the Microsoft Monoculture in Korea

The explosive transformation taking place in South Korea's mobile broadband market is creating ripples that go in all directions.  The local media and blogs are picking up on the fact that Korea's electronic transaction and internet banking regulations are causing inconvenience for users and businesses.  The current laws favor a sort of Microsoft monoculture, which has been the subject of earlier posts.
The Hankyoreh carried an excellent article on this topic a couple of days ago.   When I saw the drawing that accompanied the article, I just knew that this would require a post here.  It depicts Microsoft's ActiveX as a ball and chain restraining Korea's online market and online banking.  A great illustration with a powerful message!

Chipmakers to Battle in the Smartphone Market

The next big battle in the semiconductor industry, as described by an article in The New York Times today, is over chips for the coming generations of hand-held mobile devices.  As the article aptly begins, "The semiconductor industry has long been a game for titans."  The going rate for a state-of-the art chip fabrication factory is about $3 billion.  The plants typically take years to build and the microscopic size of chip circuitry makes for challenging engineering in order to keep up with Moore's Law.
The next phase of chip wars will focus on smartphones along with tablet and notebook sized devices.  Intel, which until now has had a very small presence in the smartphone market, is joining the fray.   The current market leader is ARM Holdings.  Global Foundries, a spinoff of Advanced Micro Devices, this year plans to start making chips at one of the most advanced factories ever built in Dresden, Germany.  Global Foundries has been helped by close to $10 billion in current and promised investments from the government of Abu Dhabi.
Other competitors in this industry include Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, United Microelectronics and, of course, Samsung Electronics.