2nd Million for TU Media - 2nd country for SK Telecom - Citi JV

June 25, 2009 ? Apparently a good day for SK Telecom PR :
- subsidiary TU Media signs its 2,000,000 th customer
- JV with Citigroup launches mobile banking services in the Philippines, a few months after Hong Kong

The SK Telecom - Citibank Philippines JV (Mobile Money Ventures LLC) is definitely good news : in Hong-Kong, services were more about portfolio management than actual personal banking and transactions - what Citi Mobile Banking (CMB) is all about in the Philippines. These browser-based services shall soon be implemented in other countries, and confirm the operator's international ambitions in mobile finance (see recently "SK Telecom's Wild Hana Card").

But is TU Media really a success ?

Many European players would love to boast 2 M mobile TV paid users, but 2 M is not even equivalent to 10% of SK Telecom's customer base and for this operator, a 10% penetration after 4 years doesn't seem very impressive.

Besides, to claim its second million customers, SKT's S-DMB unit took more time than it did for the first : TU Media was launched in May 2005 and reached the 1 M mark in December 2006.

Indeed, TU Media was in a very poor condition last year, both financially (mounting debts) and commercially (it claimed only 1.3 M subs in June 2008, a gain of 300,000 in 1.5 years). The 700k customers gained over the past 12 months are the result of what appears to be a make or break move by the owner : SKT went up in the company, injected KRW 55 bn more, and offered massive discounts to its own mobile subscribers... to the point that an undisclosed proportion of its "paid subscribers" don't have to pay to enjoy the service* !

As a consequence :

=> TU Media becomes more competitive with terrestrial accesses (T-DMB), which have been free since the beginning (launched in December 2005) : as we saw ("3M DMB subs - SBSM on its way"), that's the reason why they are much more popular. T-DMB claims the bulk of Korea's 20M+ DMB-enabled devices (every other handset is OK for mobile TV).

=> At the corporate level, TU Media is now more a MNO's Business Unit than the initial stand alone operator. The very few people who didn't use SKT as their mobile phone operator are encouraged to join the leader, and for the rest, TU Media looks almost like an option among others.

=> TU Media has been burning a lot of cash, and a sustainable TU Media requires more differenciation, and even greater efforts :

- Technological differenciation is not necessarily positive : in covered areas, terrestrial has theoretically an edge over satellite for indoor. SKT does enjoy a truly nationwide coverage, and propose an in-car access offer (TU Rideon - KRW 11,000 / mo - 3 yrs offered for Basic) as well as a real time traffic service (TU TPEG - KRW 3,000 / mo), but T-DMB is very popular for buses and coaches.

- Content and added value services remain key, and SKT will not always surf on such events as the Beijing Olympics, a major boost for subscriptions last year (the whole population was hooked and literally always on one way / media or another)... but not very differentiating since several broadcasters offered the same images (SBS clinched the exclusive TV rights for the next Olympic Games). The only "paid service" operator could try and lock some key rights to pimp up its own premium channels TU Entertainment and TU Sports (both available through the TU Select service : 1 channel for KRW 2,000 / mo, 2 for 3,000, 3 for 4,000). Other premium services feature TUBOX (movies PPV for krw 1,000 or 1,500 apiece) and PREMIUM 19+ (adult for krw 3,000 / mo or 1,200 for 2 days).

Still now, SKT seems to be as much pushing the service as trying to pull it out of a ditch. The technological landscape keeps evolving and in 2012, fixed and mobile broadband will reach respectly 1 Gbps and 10 Mbps. Typically, SKT is investing massively in optic cabling (from 5,000 km to 88,000 km) through SK Networks.

But mobile TV has found a public anyway, and SK Telecom is not the kind of player to abandon leadership easily. Particularily in such a key vertical.

So it brought along TU Media in its trials in Thailand, so...

... not to be discontinued yet.

But stay tuned.


* With TU Media, you pay only for subscription charges. Neither for traffic nor for content, except for movies on demand (NB: these days, KRW 1,000 is about USD 0.78) :
- Basic rates are KRW 6,000 for TU Slim (9 TV channels + 16 audio), idem for TU English (10 TV + 16), and KRW 11,000 for TU Basic (unlimited 21 TV + 16 audio)
- SKT customers enjoy a 6,000 discount on basic rates, which sets Basic at 5,000... and Slim and English services at zero

TF1 Sat bis with Bouygtel ?

France's TF1 group seems to be ready to strike again. After losing ground to competitors (LCI challenged by iTelevision, BFMTV and France24, TPS wolfed down by CanalSat, TF1 itself targeted by TNT bombers - French free DTV channels...), TF1 took a large slice in Groupe AB.
That was enough to revive rumors of a new satellite adventure. France's leader in audience would start late but with a total freedom of movement (no M6 around anymore), a strong brand portfolio and a vivid crash test experience.
Other rumors can now be reignited as well : a SKT-TU Media like combo with Bouygues Telecom, new international partnerships...
For the moment, TF1 Group focuses on France's 2007 Presidential Elections. An ambitious satellite program demands a powerful launching pad and Martin Bouygues has been betting on Nicolas Sarkozy from the very start.

You are Commander of the T-World

SK Telecom are sipping T more aggressively than a Liptonic britton. After TTL, Ting, TU Media* - , T Roaming or T-PAK**, they branded their new one stop online experience T-World (tworld.co.kr), yet another layer between SKT and its services brands. The logo appears on many ads and looks like a big orangish T (which should please both T-mobile and Orange) popping out of a screen. It nurtures its own "events" such as a T World festival.
The T World website mostly constists of a frame connected to all the other brands websites.... Definitely less interactive than "You are Commander", SKT's latest MMORPG.

Remember the MOMU*** ? SKT decided to launch an international version of its online Mobile Museum. Forget the "museum" thing. This "Global MOMU 2006" (eng.momu.co.kr) appears to be a display for SKT's latest services, technos and solutions ; the perfect pedagogic tool to serve its international ambitions.


* now dubbed "Real DMB TU" - a positive way of distinguishing SKT's pay S-DMB from free T-DMB, which doesn't hold virtual market share as we recently discussed (20061124) in "3M DMB subs - SBSM on its way", in which I also mentioned RFID, but without mentioning SKT and KTF's latest shows of mobile RFID and instant payments at RFID/USN Korea 2006 as well as across U Seoul. Not the University of Seoul but "Ubiquitous Seoul", the expression covering the NFC / WiFi / Wibro / Whatever cloud envelopping Korea's capital city. Koreans love to label everything with popular expressions. Like "Well Being" (pronounce "wellbing"), "Ubiquitous" is becoming a "must have" flavor. All high tech brands have now their ubiquitous exhibition lounges for trekkies (including SKT's U World, a virtual town exposed in last year's edition of U Magazine and a little bit more animated than T World).
** see "Pervasive Korea in US, China, Vietnam..." (20061030)
*** see "Finding MIMO ? after MoMu and MoMa" (20050422)

3M DMB subs - SBSM on its way

SK Telecom should hit the 1M mark by the end of this year for its TU Media S-DMB service (4% of which being in-car accesses). T-DMB claims 2.2M users because the service comes for free... but for the handsets, whose prices are bound to decrease : over 2.5M T-DMB devices sold this year, good news for Korea Inc.
Now its KTF's time to shine with a first : W-CDMA - HSDPA SBSM handsets are to be released within days.
And yesterday, the draw was held for Seoul Sup Hillstate appartments (Seoul Forest Hillstate). Among other home networking gizmos, the lucky winners will have an elevator waiting for them each time they park their RFID-enabled cars at their parking spot. From their terrace with jaccuzzi and BBQ, they will enjoy a breathtaking view on the Han river as well as on the collapse of the real estate bubble.

World Cup Train - coverage and cover up

TU Media, SK Telecom's satellite mobile TV operator, will launch World Cup Trains for the Korea-Togo game : on June the 13th, a KTX bullet train will leave Busan at 9:30 and another Seoul at 9:50. All passengers will follow the game on big screen S-DMB devices.
This "event" is about coverage but also about covering up another event : TU Media's competitors just announced the coverage of Seoul's subway lines (1 to 4) with their own T-DMB techno. It's terrestrial, it's free, and you don't have to go all the way from Seoul to Busan to enjoy the games.
T-DMB operators started much later than SKT but since they don't need to control the devices, they can leverage on a much bigger community for terminals. The mobile TV function logically became an extension of PMPs (such Portable Multimedia Players as ReignCom's iRiver Pocket TV) as well as other screens (ie digital cameras : Samsung's Miniket Photo).

Subsidies - 2nd Korean Wave

KTF ignited Korea's second round of handset subsidies* and SKT followed yesterday. Consumers don't quite understand the sophisticated grids proposed by the operators but the message is clear : you'll get more if you're a loyal big spender.
For example, at SK Telecom, you're still offered 70,000 wons if you joined the company during the last three years and if you spend less than 30,000 wons per month... but if you've been a client for over 8 years and spend over 90,000 wons per month, subsidies reach 240,000 wons and that's a 26% increase since March the 27th.
People who joined the back-then-not-yet-broad-bandwagon in '96 and spend about 80 euros per month are either business users or deep pocket early adopters (if not both) : core targets for such expensive next gen devices as DMB handsets.
The thing is SKT badly need to boost subscriptions to TU media and its business flavor TU media Corp**. End of March, almost all SKT consumers had WAP enabled (99.5%) and color (92.8%) phones. And it looks as if not everybody will need 3G (unless the operator gives up 2G) : EV-DO penetration reaches 44.6% (of which 90% are June enabled), but the score was already 38.3% end of March last year and SKT started before Japan's KDDI, a 96% 3G cellco***. The same could be said about Nate - active users stuck around 55% of the customer base.
Actually, from a wireless ARPU point of view, I'm not sure TU is such a great booster. But far beyond, the transformation of the cellco into a powerful multimedia broadcaster and content provider remains impressive.
SKT's other growth engines require time : m-commerce becomes mainstream (and it shows in ARPU), but international operations remain quite small (of the 20 M global customer bases, 19.7 M live in Korea...). We'll see how Helio** performs in the US.
And we'll aslo see how KTF performs in Korea with W-CDMA and his new international partner NTT DoCoMo...


* see "Saving private Korea Inc - back to subsidies, but no way back" (20060326).
** see previous posts on SKT's S-DMB service (TU) and US M-VNO (Helio).
*** even if you cannot compare the circumstances : SKT a leader in a pure CDMA country, and KDDI a CDMA laggard in a PDC country (who became #2 thanks to an aggressive 3G strategy).

You look WonderPhone tonight

This week, Les Echos mentioned WonderPhone were considering MediaFLO as well as DVB-H and DMB-T for the "push to store" concept they've been lobbying for since last october at the French NRA. I guess Qualcomm would love to enter by the content window after being turned down at the infrastructure door...
Along with the article came a crossbar handset, the kind of beauties dominating the airwaves in Korea since TV and movies entered mobility. T-DMB services (dubbed "take out TV") joined SKT's S-DMB Tu Media last month, but handsets are just arriving now. LG (the manufacturer) also released a T-DMB LG PDA called PM80 and big enough to tear your pockets off... judging by the size at least - I didn't read the price tag.
LG Telecom (the operator) don't offer DMB, nor even MediaFLO. So they decided to offer mobile TV for free and KTF may well follow suit.
But such devensive gifts have nothing to do with innovation, and broadband Korea will go even more broadband this year : FTTH keeps spreading* and KT will launch their Wibro services next April in Seoul. The fixed incumbent intends to compete with SKT & KTF's HSDPA much more aggressively than it did with their WiFi services (Nespot).
In the meanwhile, ReignCom Ltd (iRiver's manufacturer) are building an impressive (and not so unreminiscent of N-GAGE) platform around their new Wibro game console : partners include KT, POSdata Co. (system integrator), CJ Internet and NHN (Hangame portal).
How do you say "plenty" in Korean ? "Manta"... Which leads us back to WonderPhone : Manta happens to be the name of their mobile game portal.

* I've been enjoying it at home for one year now. In Seoul, because as far as Paris is concerned, I understand FT were just planning a few thousand lines for the next two years at 4 to 5 times the price charged in Seoul...
A few links : wonder-phone.com - nespot.com - reigncom.com

IPTV and happy TV

Korea already enjoys 12M broadband connections ; about 80% of all households or 25% of the population, compared to about 45% and 80% for fixed and mobile lines. Yet, genuine IPTV cannot be launched, limiting Korea Telecom to a few symbolic demos despite their ambitious plans for 2006 ($300M). Now they're talking Q2 2006 for an actual launch.
The Korean Broadcasting Commission, backed by the country's powerful cablecos, plays it "over my dead body" : IPTV is broadcasting stuff, not to be regulated by a telecom body.
Elsewhere, Mobile TV is still struggling. We're not hearing much about TuMedia stats and SKT officials are more verbal about MelOn (600k paid subs out of 4M).
Anti-competitive issues notwithstanding, Korea's MNOs would certainly love to put a few wons in classic TV channels. And I guess with higher stakes than NTT DoCoMo in Fuji TV.

Handle with e-care - China-aware pro gaming

Still keepin' an eye on SKT's stats, and especially TU media (following Slomobile TV) : now covering 84 cities, the mobile TV service claimed 200,000 subs after almost 5 months of operation. That's about 1,400 customers a day, but this average is supposed to be 2,400 nowadays (the first 100k took 2 months and 22 days, the last 2 months and 6 days). 90 more days at this pace would bring them over 400k subs at the end of the year and I guess they can push to an average 3,500 with the high season coming but they'd need a strong 4,500 to reach their original 600,000 target.
More impressive : last summer and 5 years after launch, e-Station (SKT's e-CRM portal) signed its 10th million customer. The service averages 160K users per day (70% being in their 20s-30s) and 16.4M acts per month (about 3 times as much as over the phone). Many MNOs would die for such figures.
For those as well : over 94% of SKT's customers are equiped with cdma2000 phones, now dubbed "2.5G"*. 84% have color screens and 52% are active Nate users. The mobile portal keeps improving and proposing new services, but the operator knows "wireless internet" is not the only field beyond voice. Hard to tell how m-finance and banking are contributing.
As far as international is concerned, I'm still expecting some juicy fruits from the SKT-Earthlink partnership, but the only news came from the MNO's professional gamers' team, T1, which drafted two Starcraft players from China. I don't know whether these hardcore gamers are ready to die for their new bosses but the mobile arena could be safer than a PC Bang : a 23 year old Briton, Darren Prior, was recently saved by his LG U8210 during a bank robbery, the handset stopping the bullet.
Welcome to Korea, the country where operators become bankers and handset manufacturers life insurers.

* still no specific statistics for EV-DO, but good news for 3G UMTS : since SKT are preparing commercial launch of HSDPA early 2006 (Nortel-LG to deliver the goods), they are pushing W-CDMA as well in the South : commercial launch this November for Jeju-do, Jeolla-do and Gyeongsang-do + Busan.

Slomo mobile TV

Sorry but I can't help following closely the evolution of S-DMB in Korea. Last week-end, TU Media's Heo Jae-Yeong revealed a significant rise in subscriptions (140,000 from last month's 75,000), but he also warned the 600,000 target wouldn't be met by the end of the year, blaming the regulation for preventing the dominant operator from subsidizing handsets. The fact is only early adopters can afford to pay $600 to 800 for these lilliputian TVs on the go.
The problem is this doesn't tell us how many would be converted in an aggressive scenario, how far the market can reach beyond early adopters and how quick.
And the problem goes beyond SK Telecom : the likes of Samsung also want to enjoy the dividends of being the firsts on the market, especially since the whole world is watching. Manufacturers may have to cut their margins to help boost the sales. A shot in the arm or a shot in the foot ?
Anyway, expect a strong lobbying and a fierce debate about competitive Korea : which is most important, the fairness of the local market or the nation's competitive edge ? Unfortunately for Lee Gun-Hee, the least one could say is neither the Government nor the public opinion seem in a mood to please him nowadays.

Zero noodle. Korea goes South.

Wireless goes TV : the latest Samsung TV phone for TU Media has a stand so that the user can watch it without holding it. Next disruption ? I suggest the integration of the "mobile TV" in a 1950s piece of furniture...
TV goes wireless : China's Haier claims the world's first UWB HDTV. Remember the first 802.11b TV ? I don't give a damn which techno makes it provided "zero noodle" happens before "zero paper".
Korea goes South :

• It may take BenQ some time to catch up with LG and Samsung in the mobile handset business, but Taiwan is already ahead of Korea as far as LCD screens are concerned.
• One year after turning down Qualcomm's EV-DV chip, LG Telecom will fulfill his 3G duties in Korea with Qualcomm's EV-DO revision A erzatz (EV-DO rA ble ?). Sign of the times : LG just applied for a wireless license in China and among the 8 players to apply, only Amoi prefered CDMA to GSM.

Japan goes West : Mobile payment 1 : 0 Mobile philantropy (injury time).

• NTT DoCoMo are pushing as hard as ever in the mobile payment arena. One day after clinching a deal with East Japan Railway on common infrastructures for Suica and Osaifu Keitei, they announced a JV with ULTRA d.d.d., the Slovenian owner of Telargo (a mobile assets management specialist of which DCM will take 49%) and the much more interesting

M-PAY...

While DoCoMo are pushing, Arun Sarin is considering an end to the Vodafone Ka Ka in Japan.

West meets East : China Netcom and Telefonica decided to work together on their core businesses and, more spectacularily, to share managerial best practices and seats at each other's Boards and Committees. The Carlos Goshn's effect ? Expect some wireless byproducts (Goshn in a clamshell ?).

Humble pies and compulsive eaters

End of June, WCDMA and CDMA2000 1x claimed respectively 28,3 and 186M subs (still no split for 1x EV from the CDMA Development Group), which means since our last count, one semester ago the global 3G market* grew by one third and 3GSM's share didn't take off dramatically (from 10 to 13%).
CDMA is still leveraging on its key asset (compared to GSM-WCDMA, migration remains a piece of cake for operators), but the phenomenon is reaching its limits : "3G" now represents 3/4 of the global 256M CDMA subscriber base (only 2% for the 1,430M GSM family, not to mention the other technos joining WCDMA). Besides, WCDMA is just gaining momentum and will eventually make it in Korea with the help of HSDPA, for which KTF and SKT just agreed on a march 2006 launch**. Even in Japan, FOMA is catching up with 38,7% of the 3G market... less than 2G laggard KDDI but 12 times better than Vodafone KK...
Well. I'm getting nowhere. This WCDMA vs CDMA2000 thing is getting boring. What matters now is what's growing out of this pie.
You'd better focus on players used to claiming leadership beyond the mobile market. While maintaining a market share acceptable by the regulator, SK Telecom claims 10M subs for NateOn or 14M for Cyworld. Their S-DMB service has seduced 75,000 subs within 2 months and still expects 600,000 by the E.O.Y. If you remember, that's far ahead of MBCO's DMB service : MobaHO! reach only 10,000 after 3 months, a poor score for a consortium of 90 companies (including SKT). Beyond the glamorous "Take Out TV", TU Media basically remains a mobile phone and the usage of the service logically contributes to the operator's wireless data ARPU, but this shouldn't be always the case. Let's see how stats will be kept when other accesses appear, when actual new biz starts.


* Well that's the 3G market defined as the sum of the two most relevant IMT-2000 technologies implemented by cellular operators : TD-SCDMA's been delayed again, and neither EDGE nor DECT can be considered 3G. TDD has been implemented but not in the right spectrum yet.
** SKT's HSDPA rates are as follow : 16k wons per month (about $16) for the charge and 2 to 3 megs for the bits. Manufacturers will make sure handsets are on time for the World to see. For the moment, Koreans see WCDMA attracted 3,000 customers in 20 month including such "customers" as the operators' staff and partners...

From Hallyuwood to Hollywood

Remember when WAP emulators were all the rage ? They kind of fell into oblition because of that WAP thing and because of that 3G fade (I'm so customer centric I do have to film the damn guy holding the device, even if it saturates the surfer's not-so-broad-band connection.
Now SK Telecom just released an emulator for their new services and it sounds like the perfect remote control. For the enduser (in order to control the said services) as well as for the operator (in order to control the said enduser).
SKTWorld provides a good start to the victim of their massive ads : Nate, June, Moneta, NateDrive, 1mm, PlayOn, Moville, TU dmb + direct links to the new stars on the block (MelOn for music lovers, Cizle for moviegoers on the go, GXG for mobile gamers). As one could have suspected, they leverage on the entry point to get you straight into their databases - they don't care whether you're already a customer or not : they presume the customer experience is so much fun you can't resist and go for the actual thing. You're a customer and you have the required device ? You can download the app at once and enjoy a free trial on it ("Free Experience Tour"). You don't have the device yet ? Order it, and customize it while you're at it ("Peripherals Mall"). You're not a customer yet ? No sweat : shopping or portability are just one click away.
SKTWorld goes further thanks to an Amazon-like collaborative filtering system : beyond the usual tailor suited piece of advice ("My Type Mobile" guesses the best service after your usage patterns), a "Mobile Together" feel-good concept (this goes too far for you not-so-early-adopter you ? don't worry : here's what fits people your age and sex).
But SKTWorld is bound to go even further. Just like the juicy MelOn, this is a dotcom website, not a dotcodotkr nor even a dotnatedotcom one... And by the way, SK-Earthlink just announced new headquarters in Westwood, Los Angeles. We're not talking Koreatown but Hollywood / Beverly Hills lads, the expected next step for SK "Hallyuwood" Telecom (from the beginning we expected business oriented SK-Earthlink to enter the multimedia arena). And the company is hiring. Staff for a start. Consumers should follow soon.

Hardware behind, hard work ahead

The very day TU Media's satellite DMB service was launched, SK Telecom sold their handset manufacturing unit SK Teletech to Pantech & Curitel (P&C moves closer to the Samsung - LG duo but remains a relatively small player internationally). Whatever happens to Moneta ? Dongles can be found all over Korea and mobile banking / finance seems catching but SKT may end up joining the Sony - DoCoMo felica stream.
Anyway SKT confirm their switch from customer-techno-centric to customer-content-focused ambitions, and Hallyuwood should bring better differenciation and higher added value in the long term provided the MNO manages to lock a nice position there. Their market share is shrinking but still strong and this is certainly not the time when short term shareholder ROI should be put first.

Wake up you should

"Mobile TV broadcasting consider I will", says master Voda. The dark side of the 3G force is taking over Japan : KDDI led in december net adds just ahead of DoCoMo while J-Phone stalled (less than one thousand customers added over one month - not much less humiliating than the first losses last summer). The score for wireless data access services stands now at 43M for i-mode, 17.5M for EZ Web and 13M for J-Sky. And when it comes to 3G, Vodafone trails with a meager 366,000 base - far behind FOMA (8.5M) and Au 3G (16.8M).
So ta-daa, here comes Vodafone Japan's answer : when 2-3 years ago, SKT would broadcast TV over 3G EVDO, and as MBCo and TU media keep releasing DMB novelties, the closest thing to a buzzing laser sword master Voda can produce is a NEC V601N. Basically, a mobile phone coupled with an analog TV. Mercifully, the scotch tape happens to be honorably transparent.
If you look at the brighter side : Vodafone was bound to suffer for at least two years in this battle on W-CDMA early bird's home turf and against a cdma2000 operator. This very challenge was the ultimate test to spur its innovation drive, the heck of a wake up call, boosting the collaboration with DoCoMo on Super 3G. If it weren't for Japan, master Voda may have lost one more year (put aside the inevitable "lost in translation / lost in transition" time following the purchase of Japan Telecom) contemplating levitation stunts performed in a far far away archipelago. Stephane MOT

Neck plus ultra

Step by step, TU media is making DMB history :

• SK Telecom launched their satellite last march but it took them almost a year to launch a preservice for early adopters - but don't blame this master of TTM for the delay : regulatory hurdles were tough (actually, SKT literally had to build their own arena to make sure the race would start before competitors were born).
• for a week now, TU media preservice has been freely providing 3 video channels already familiar to June customers (Music with m-net, News with YTN and Drama with SBS Drama and MBC Drama) plus 6 audio channels. Ads have been running featuring a man pushing a shopping cart while his son's enjoying a show on the horizontally turned 5.5 cm screen of the Samsung SCH-B100 hanging from his father's neck. With mini mobile theaters, it's not about the audience doing some necking when the lights are out - it's about the theater itself ruining the owner's neck.
• That's a 622 euro (850,000 W) theater and batteries are supposed to run for 150 mn of intensive usage : forget a LOTR marathon or handset subsidies (the latter forbidden by the government). And Koreans also have to invest in digital TV : already 15% own it today for a projected 48% end 2007 according to the Electronic Industries Association of Korea...* More devices (including in-car sets) will be available by may, when overall 14 video and 24 audio channels are broadcasted (the first 3 data channels are scheduled for 2005).
• The access fees will then cost about 14.6 euros per month (20,000 wons) and SKT expects a 9.5 euro (13,000 wons) ARPU. Not too aggressive a business plan considering today's wireless internet ARPU for SKT's WI enabled handset owners (about 6 euros according to their monthly stats). SKT's partner in Japan MBCo launched their DMB service last october and claims a lousy 10,000 subscribers but they solely provided in-car devices and don't have the marketing power of Korea's leader. SKT expects 600,000 subscribers end 2005 and 5.6M end 2010. Not aggressive either : that's the equivalent of 3 and 30% of their customer base and it took much less time for them to equip 6M people with EVDO handsets.

How about cannibalization, then ? That's the big issue... but that's also the way this first mover is keeping its edge. Stephane MOT

* while we're at it : Korea remains at the top for broadband access among OECD members (24.08% equipment rate - to be compared to 15% for Canada, the distant runner-up). If you are to believe last NIDA poll, 69.3% of all Koreans already used the internet at home back in june 2003 (55% through xDSL and 9.5% through CATV), 46.3% managed more than one e-mail address (and 12.6% their own homepage - thank you Cyworld). Wireless internet usage reached 36.1% (over 83% for the 12-19 year olds), and among users 53.4% paid for premium sites and 21.2% did some m-shopping (74.5% for downloading stuff but already 14.3% for clothes, groceries or food).