Virtual shopping in South Korea

Last fall I was living in Seoul's Gangnam district when the British retailer TESCO introduced its "virtual shopping" experiment at a nearby subway station.  It appears that this experiment has achieved some degree of success in Korea and may spread to other markets around the world.  Forbes, in an article entitled "The future of shopping is virtual," reports that, the retailer Peapod is trying out a similar scheme in Chicago.  As noted in that article, virtual shopping pioneered in South Korea.   The video below provides an interesting glimpse into the fast moving Korean marketplace and how retailers are exploring new uses for those smart phones that nearly all consumers will soon carry.

Samsung turns to outside talent for mobile software

The Wall Street Journal carried an article noting that Samsung Electronics has begun to aggressively hire foreign software engineers, especially from India, in an effort to keep up with its rival Apple.  The article adds some interesting context to current developments.   However, there is a somewhat misleading sentence early in the article, suggesting that "...as the smartphone market rapidly shifts its emphasis from hardware to software, the Korean manufacturer is realizing it must change its insular corporate culture." In point of fact, the smartphone market has been heavily dependent on software from the very beginning, especially the variety called mobile "Apps," but including all of the software required to support an "ecosystem of services." This reality helps to explain why there was such excruciating shock in the South Korean market when Apple's iPhone finally arrived in late 2009, after it had already been adopted in about 80 other countries over a two and one half year period.
The need for an ecosystem of services that provides useful information service applications also explains why there are two dominant players in the global smartphone market today, Google and Apple, which I identify in order of the degree of their present and future dominance.  Google, with its Android software and growing array of cloud-based information services, has chosen a course that seems likely to make it far more dominant in the global marketplace than Apple.   As to the Microsoft-Nokia alliance, I think that both of those companies came late to the party.   Microsoft especially, suffers from being so closely tied to the old, Windows desktop model of computing, which is now rapidly being replaced by cloud-based, mobile solutions.  Here in the Korean market, LG has paid a heavy price for its decision to use Microsoft's mobile software.
The Wall Street Journal article also notes that Samsung's own mobile software platform, Bada, has been unpopular with consumers.  Rather than attempting to introduce an entirely new mobile OS, I would think Samsung could benefit over the long run by putting its software engineers to work on ensuring that all of its mobile devices run efficiently on Android and on the development of both Android apps and logical extensions of the Android platform (which after all is an open platform) in Asia and for the global marketplace.

Akamai's "state of the internet": A report from Daejon

Akamai has released its State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2011.  Readers of this blog will know that I've been following those reports somewhat regularly in recent years, most recently in a post last fall. This latest report takes on even greater interest now that I've moved to Daejon in order to join the faculty of KAIST.   You see, Daegu and Daejon  (spelled Taegu and Taejon in the Akamai report) topped the list of the worlds cities with the fastest average broadband connection speeds, as shown in Figure 9 of the report.  In fact, they were the only two cities with average connection speeds above 20 Mbps.

In this era of increasing use of big-data and data visualization on the internet, the Akamai report is well worth reading, and reading carefully with an eye toward data sources, sample size and possible sampling error.  Even more interesting and useful than the downloadable quarterly State of the Internet report, are the online tools that can be accessed on the same page of the Akamai web site.  They allow the easy creation of line graphs comparing data from different countries.   For example, Figure 8 of Akamai's quarterly report contains the table presented here (click to see a full-size version), along with a world map that shows  the location of leading countries.  Although this static picture is interesting, it is possible to create a more informative picture of what is happening in those countries by using the data visualization tool on the website to create and download a line graph from the data made available.  
I've done so and the graph is presented here (click to see a full-size version).   It shows the average broadband connection speeds for the top five nations in Figure 8 by quarter, for over four years from the third quarter of 2007 through the end of 2011.  This line graph is only one small example of what is made possible by Akamai's  "State of the Internet Data Visualization" tool.  Indeed, it is possible to compare data across time for many different combinations of nations.   I found it very interesting to note that the world map presented on the Akamai site contains data for North Korea, but only if you hover over that country with the mouse pointer.  Data for North Korea are not available on the drop down menu of nations and individual U.S. states.  For the record, North Korea shows an average connection speed of 1,012 kbps, or just over 1 Mbps.
There is much, much more that could be said about the gathering and reporting of big data on internet trends, but I will leave that for future posts, while I continue to enjoy "Daejon-speed" broadband internet.  As always, comments are welcome.

Korea's service sector lagged in 2010

Statistics Korea has released the nation's first-ever economic census.   Not surprisingly, it shows that in 2010 the manufacturing sector continued to dominate South Korea's economy.  According to the report, the total yearly revenue of Korean businesses reached 4,332 trillion won ($3.8 trillion) in 2010.  The breakdown of that total among major sectors is show in the accompanying graphic (click on it to see a full-size version). Note that the services sector, includes dining and lodging, broadcasting and media, education and health and social services.

As illustrated in a post I did over a year ago, the heavy dependence on manufacturing represents a long term trend.  Korea's dependence on manufacturing and the export of manufactured products seems to permeate its ICT sector.  Over the past week or so, Samsung Electronics has received a great deal of publicity owing to the dramatic increase of its exports in the first quarter of 2012, spurred by high global demand for its smartphones and other mobile handsets.  Industry observers have also noted the success of Samsung, along with LG, in the global market for television sets and displays, now that the thinner, lightweight and lower power consumption LED technology is going mainstream.
Despite South Korea's remarkable success in manufacturing and the global export of its manufactured products, there seems to be a general understanding that, to ensure future success, the nation must improve the relative strength of its service sector.   The reason for this is the relative size, in the global market place of services, software and content, compared with communications hardware.
It is difficult to convey just how large the global ICT sector is, but the accompanying bar chart from the Digital Planet 2010 report of the World Information Technology and Services Alliance provides one industry estimate. (click on the chart to see a larger version)  To interpret this chart, keep in mind that communications spending, represented by the blue bars, includes the total value of voice and data communications services and equipment.  The equipment category, of course, includes both wire line and wireless handsets, switching equipment, answering machines and so forth.  Nevertheless, it seems clear from this bar chart that the total value of software and services far exceeds that of hardware and equipment.

K-pop and Korea's Entertainment Industry

One of the topics to which I have returned on occasion is the heavy dependence of South Korea's economy and its ICT sector on manufacturing versus software and the creation of content and services. There are some bright spots that suggest this situation may change in the future. One of those is the multiplayer online game industry, especially as that industry adjusts to the increasing availability of mobile broadband around the world. Another one is South Korea's entertainment industry, which has generated a "Korean wave" that has swept across the globe, especially throughout Asia, in recent years. This year the U.S. market seems to be taking notice of K-pop. As suggested by the headline of a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, this may be the year that "K-pop enters American pop consciousness."   As the article appropriately notes, "Poised at the intersection of two countries' fast-moving pop cultures and cutting-edge media technology, the sprawling genre colloquially known as K-pop has operated outside the American pop limelight. But that's changing."  Later it notes that K-pop grew in Korea partly because "Songs and especially videos were quickly passed over high-speed Internet and mobile devices several times faster than what's available in America. In a related point, the article suggests that, "...while K-pop has a lively Internet presence, America lacks a dominant media hub for first encountering K-pop culture. If one emerges, it might the Culver City-based Mnet. Its cable channel, a division of CJ Entertainment, is heavily focused on K-pop and broadcasts a mix of video countdown shows like "M! Countdown," "Jjang!" (a celebrity gossip show) and "Hello Pop!" (a social-media-themed show whose 21-year-old host, Chrissa Villanueva, is L.A.-raised and Filipina).

K-pop received a big boost with the appearance in January of this year of The Girl's Generation on The David Letterman Show, as shown in the following video.