Korea's fourth license reload

According to The Korea Herald (May 29), the Korean government is considering reviving the project of a fourth MNO license as part of a plan to stimulate the market.

Is there a need for another 4G network? Korea is well covered with LTE to LTE-A, beefed-up locally through pervasive femtocells and WiFi. And the three incumbents don't want to sit on their laurels: Korea Telecom promised 5G trials for the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, and SK Telecom announced a partnership with Google on augmented reality ("T-AR for Project Tango").

Is there a need for more competition? It depends on the profile of the new player, and the impacts on a M-VNO ecosystem that, at long last, is biting into a pie still dominated by SK Telecom, Korea Telecom, and LG U+.

According to the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), M-VNOs were claiming a 8.8% market share as of April 21 (up from 2.9% in June 2012), thanks to prices on average 57% cheaper than the MNOs.

But it's not as if you had one fourth player with a 8.8% market share, big enough to contest the leaders on more profitable segments. Today, Korea has 27 M-VNOs, most struggling to make their first profit, and likely to never see it. Significantly, their number of subscribers started to explode when they targeted more discount-seeking audiences (the youth, Chinese migrant workers...).

A perennial candidate for the 4th spot is actually a consortium of M-VNOs: KMI (Korea Mobile Internet) revived their candidacy in October 2013, and defending the existing M-VNO ecosystem could be a stronger argument today. In December 2011, the Korea Communications Commission not only rejected KMI's bid, but also that of IST (Internet Space Time lost the backing of Hyundai Group at a critical moment). Note that the KCC also canceled the auction for the WiBro spectrum. I explained a few months earlier ("A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc") how the attempt by the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Businesses (Kbiz) to enter the market looked more like a lobbying stunt to push WiBro.

A much bigger fish could also seek the fourth license, with more brand power. Typically, CJ Group is already a major player in telecom, IPTV, or multimedia contents. It has the money to invest on new networks (Daum Kakao or Naver would need serious backing), the customer bases to leverage, and the contents to fill the pipes..., but don't bet on price wars with fellow chaebol on the juiciest segments. 
 
A true new entrant from overseas? Global MNOs know how difficult it would be in a country where foreign majors are seldom allowed to take or maintain leading positions (see retail for example: Carrefour and Wal-Mart already gone, Tesco on the back seat). But joining a consortium, or creating one remains a rare opportunity for international platforms to push their solutions in an otherwise locked Korean market. And nowadays, the dominant platforms do not necessarily belong to telecom operators...

Anyway, expect more lobbying ahead of the government's guidelines, expected by the end of June.

• See also "Daum Kakao, Google Campus... Korean platforms on steroids", other posts related to innovation in Korea.

mot-bile 2015

* "Consortium to bid for 4th mobile carrier in S. Korea" (Yonhap News - 2013/10/08)

Face Recognition: When Smart TV Goes Too Smart

Samsung wants to implement face recognition in certain smart TVs. The function is already available for mobile devices but here, the idea is to adapt content to viewers, for instance in order block adult content when a kid is watching (tadaa - how about Junior in his Spiderman costume?). Swiss researchers have been studying the concept for years, but for a monitor equipped with an arm that allows the screen to follow the user (picture yourself in your kitchen with flour all over your hands and the urgent need to browse recipes).

Speaking of mobile and TV and following our previous updates about M-VNOs in Korea*, CJ HelloVision just launched "Hello Mobile" on Korea Telecom, and the country's second MSO could post interesting figures with the contribution of parent company CJ Group, still a food franchise powerhouse but now the country's multimedia leader (CGV, CGmedia, CJ Home Shopping...). CJ already proposes many mobile apps and multiplatform services (ie tving), but expect more e-commerce synergies ahead, particularly following the launch of Mobile E-Mart, also on KT. Homeplus (Tesco-Samsung) also considering entering the arena as MVNO.

Hello Mobile follows Insprit (Enspert tablet on Wibro) and SRoaming (Skype Roaming phone rental), also on KT, still the leader with a little more than 300,000 MVNO lines compared to about 50,000 for SK Telecom. Remember: KT struck the first deals two years ago*.

mot-bile 2012

* see "A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc", "Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs", "Korea : Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO"

A Kbiz MNO ? SMEs vs Korea Inc

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Businesses (KFSB or Kbiz) wants to join SK Telecom, Korea Tecom and LG U+ (LG Telecom) as Korea's fourth mobile network operator.

This bid looks like a complete joke : a Kbiz-led consortium of 900 small businesses would invest about KRW 100 bn (USD 94 M) in "4G Wibro". How could it succeed where much stronger players failed and where MVNOs themselves cannot thrive* ?

Kbiz claims 2.7 million SMEs, but I don't see this greenfield player take those demanding customers from the big boys.

WiBro, a WMAN technology competing with WiMax, remains a Koreano-Korean thing with a convenient 4G label. Typically, KT is advertising about their "4G WiBro" coverage as SKT launches its LTE as the "real 4G", but eventually all 3 MNOs will implement LTE. Note that KT is also willing to close its 2G CDMA networks and proposing nice 3G/4G plans to die hard users, some of which have been keeping prehistoric handsets because of unbeatable unlimited rates.

Kbiz needs Samsung to propose WiBro, and that could be the actual aim of the game : not the candidacy to a license, but the PR operation behind the announcement.

Samsung is the ultimate chaebol, the perfect symbol of those almighties who rule over Korean economy and are often blamed for the weakness of the nation's SME ecosystem. Worse : they create their own SMEs to benefit from pro-SME incentives and suck even more value from the market. Even LEE Myung-bak, the CEO president who came from Hyundai Engineering and Construction, is campaigning about a 'fair society' where chaebols would allow small fish to survive.

I don't know if Kbiz will really go all the way, or if Samsung will pretend to play their game for image's sake... but Korean market remains fun to observe.

mot-bile 2011

* see "Korea : Onse Telecom wants to be a MVNO", "Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs"...

Showing off : Google I/O, World IT Show, Android@Home, Flixster@omized...

More news from Google I/O* :
- Google loves contents and furthermore, how it's conveyed to you : beyond Music Beta by Google (see "Skype keeps moving, Google googling"), "Movie for rent" sounds like the killer app for (or rather against) Flixster & co.
- Android rocks and keeps gaining Gmentum in the hardware and middleware wars : 100 million activated Android devices (+ 400,000 every day), 200,000 apps in Android Market (4.5 bn apps installed from the same joint)
- on the go : handsets and tablets to converge in the Ice Cream Sandwich version of the OS
- in the more "fixed" range : with the Android@Home concept, Android starts sniffing around your place for friendly devices (including the Project Tungsten designed for Music Beta by Google)

... deja vu all over again for Apple, even if Google won't dominate the OS world the way Microsoft did.

More modestly, the World IT Show (WIS) started at the COEX in Seoul, with LG back on tracks (LG Optimus 3-D handsets, 3D TV war on Samsung, who also pushes its Smart TV and its dual core, 4G Galaxy S2), and SK Telecom showing off its own novelties (N-Screen, LTE network, Wibro CCTVs...).

mot-bile 2011

* "Android: momentum, mobile and more at Google I/O"

Smartphone Overloads and Tablet Scares

Korean operators are just beginning to "enjoy" the dark side of their honeymoon with smartphones : capacity issues. This as smartphone penetration remains relatively low (about 5 M users), and data-guzzling tablets loom on very close horizon (Samsung Galaxy, Apple iPad...).

MNOs can't say they weren't warned : they've been waging a war to secure as many hotspots as possible, rolling out WiFi, Wibro, and all you can eat fiber networks to prevent data overloads.

What puzzles me is the commercial war that accelerated wireless data network saturation this summer : non existent before, unlimited data offers have taken over the country and right now, every other smartphone user subscribes to these proven networkphobic plans. Furthermore and as we saw earlier (see "VoIP over 3G, unlimited data... SK Telecom victim of the summerheat wave ?"), the ones who ignited the war were no others than the ones who risked the most : market leaders SK Telecom. Needless to say, #2 KT soon followed suit, causing #3 LG U+ (formerly LG Telecom) to join the suicical party short afterwards.

Short term vision 101 ? On the brighter side, this madness may help next gen networks bloom even earlier : Korea already targets 1 Gbps and 10 Gbps for mobile and fixed data by 2012.

mot-bile 2010

IPTV in Korea, an update

Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is now one year old, and IPTV eventually gaining ground.

Korea's 3 IP operators totalled 595,000 IPTV subs at the end of July 2009. They're still dwarfed by cablecos (ie CJ Hello Vision boasts about 800,000 cable TV subs, C&M 700,000), but they gained 26% in one month and 58% over the past two months. And cablecos are feeling the heat as IP players plan to extend the technological wars into new territories.

As we saw earlier*, Korea's 3 IPTV players are also Korea's 3 MNOs. They cannot market VoIP as aggressively as they'd like to, nor propose as wide a choice of TV channels as cablecos, but they keep extending their TV offers, and their triple play offers are claiming new converts.

With 22% of the IPTV market, SK Broadband (SK Telecom) is still lagging behind Qook (KT/KTF, 46%) and LG Dacom (LG Telecom, 32% MS), but it led the small pack with a 35% market share for July and at such a pace, positions could very much change dramatically before the end of the year.

KT intends to remain confortably at the top, and will put more pressure on its competitors by pushing voice over WiBro.

Stuck with cdma2000 for 3G, LG Telecom is speeding up the preparation of LTE (announced for 2013), with the help of its cousin LG Electronics, who will provide NTT DoCoMo with "4G" chips as early as next year for the first LTE devices. LG Telecom can also count on Qualcomm to quicken the transition from cdma2000 to LTE.

In partnership with the National Information Society Agency (NIA), KCC recently announced "Giga Internet" service trials for 2,000 households by the end of 2012. The idea is to lift Korea Inc from the 100M "standard" to 1 Giga all the way across the value chain, with new networks, new devices, and new IPTV services (3D, multi-angle, HD Home CCTV, TV multimedia messenger...). One consortium will be led by KT (the leading "telco") and the other by CJ Hello Vision (the leading "cableco").

Concentration seems bound to accelerate. Most Korea Cable Television and Telecommunications Association (KCTA) operators are not fitted for this kind of race, and some players may be up for grabs for powerful new entrants : controversial new media laws allow press groups and conglomerates to invest in broadcasting, and not all of them may be satisfied with a partner's seat.

mot-bile 2009

* see "One stop selling", "IPTV wars and WiBro truce", "IPTV in Korea"

IPTV wars and WiBro truce ?

The Korean telecom regulator awarded IPTV licenses to KT (mega TV), Hanarotelecom (HanaTV), and LG Dacom (myLGTV). Trials start next week, and negociations with broadcasters are still raging.

Up to now*, the trio mostly competed on VOD exclusivities (price for myLGTV), but after an intensive summer of lobbying, they expect to propose real-time TV from major broadcasters from October on.

Korean authorities are also considering Voice over WiBro, the very day KT announced a MOU with a Japanese player.

But UQ Communications Inc is not likely to roll out WiBro : it is supposed to launch a WiMAX service next year, and recently inaugurated its first WiMAX trial base station. Besides, Intel owns part of its shares (other investors : KDDI Corporation, Kyocera, East Japan Railways, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, the Bank of Tokyo, and Daiwa Securities Group).

The MOU is about finding roaming solutions at the hardware and middleware level, so that WiBro users (mainly pro users) can somehow use the same device when they travel to Japan.

Korean players making the first move, and the regulator giving a push to the techno... combined the same day, these two pieces of news don't sound that positive for WiBro


* see "IPTV in Korea" (20080508)

Korea : 2G WiBro South, 3GSM North

North Korea (or at least certain parts of the hermitest kingless kingdom) has been enjoying 2G GSM since 2002. And for an even more restricted public since 2004, after the train explosion rumored to be an assassination attempt against KIM Jong-il.

Now the Dear Leader can enjoy movies on the go even outside of his personal bunker-train. CHEO Technology (a Korea Post & Telecommunications / Orascom - 25% / 75% - JV) was awarded a 25 year 3G W-CDMA license earlier this year and obviously started investing ($ 400 M for the network and the license).

Cross the border, China Unicom has been stripped of its CDMA network. New investments in online gaming (30% of Hong Kong's Magicgrids Networks and partnerships with its mainland China Magic Tech Network subsidiary) did not make up for this great loss for SK Telecom.

But the Dear South Korean Mobile Leader announced this week a successful real-time HD video trial of its Wibro Wave 2 : this 2G WiBro claims rates of up to 10Mbps / 37Mbps (up/downlink) will be rolled out across the capital (TTM H2 2008).

SKT wants to market Wibro Wave 2 cheaper than 1G WiBro. KT started its service much later but leads the market. Besides, it is merging its customer service units with KTF and the merger of the two companies seems everyday more probable.

And the competition is raging, forcing MNOs to slash prices for data (ie -30% for SKT phone-mail) and increase marketing expenses (+30% YOY for SKT 2008Q1 - handset subsidies frenzy is back). No wonder SKT's operating income went down 16.3% in 2008Q1.

The worst may be coming : as of July, USIM lock will end and Koreans will at last enjoy the fun of handset and operator switch.

The WiBro Affair

A negative word about WiBro from SK Telecom's CEO ignited a PR frenzy in favor of Korea's "Mobile WIMAX" technology.

Recently endorsed as ITU-R IMT-2000, this member of the 802.16 family is alive and kicking in Seoul. While SKT focuses on HSPA and rolls out WiBro reluctantly, KT insists with the benediction of Korea Inc : the Government, the ETRI, and of course Posco, the mother company of POSDATA, a major promoter of WiBro who's seeking new markets and opening offices in Kuala Lumpur

KT claims 100,000 subs EOY 2007 with the ambition to reach 400,000 EOY 2008, and downloads to be 3 times faster than with HSPA (3 Mbps vs 1). It's WiBro service sounds almost cheap : a little bit under 20,000 wons, that's halfway between ADSL and FTTH.

But Korea Telecom will need to widen the range of devices available - up to now : 10 modems, 5 laptops and 3 handsets (PC Cards and PDAs are also on the market).

And KT needs to spend a lot on IPTV this year.

To add to the fun, competition is definitely getting fiercer in Korea : POSDATA is facing technology thieves within its own staff and 4 researcher have just been put in jail because they tried to steal WiBro secrets for the US.

Now that's a brilliant PR operation : you don't want to steal something you can't sell... Unless you're an art lover falling for rare antiques.

3G & 4G - WiMAX flirts with ITU

Following the WiMAX Forum's whitepaper on "WiMAX and IMT-2000" (20070122), the ITU could consider mobile WiMAX as an official 3G technology. Along with W-CDMA and CDMA2000, but also EDGE or DECT.

And this time it could work, since major cellcos may not want to counterlobby the IEEE on that one. Arun Sarin recently warned fellow MNOs about the risk of letting WiMAX kill 3G but Vodafone may want to trade its nod with a permanent lock on its GSM spectrum. And cellcos don't want another battle for 4G licensing (beyond the colossal sums paid to governments, they have to cope with license fees from Qualcomm & Co, not to mention the complexity of technos overloaded with unnecessary specs). Even in the 3GSM world, WiMAX could be welcomed as a convenient cornerstone for 4G LTE (better have them with us than against us).

But the IT-telecom war ain't over till it's over, and I'm not sure European manufacturers will tolerate the gift to Cisco & Co that soon. In France, Orange, SFR and Bouygues won't let Iliad end up with 3G for Free that easily.

Unless you consider IT gave up the war and decided to join the telecom band. Not unlike Qualcomm's GSM1x, the large IEEE 802.16 family's latest avatars are advertised as the natural evolution of their main competitors (TDD inside, MBS combining DVB-H and 3GPP E-UTRA...). Even WiBro, that prodigal son, is welcomed back home. How cute... Charles Ingalls will have to cut a lot of wood for the party tonight.

IEEE 802.16m* evolution looks great, but so did 802.16n, with n the variable for the number of years before actual delivery. And this is not your own OFDMA out there, but "IP-OFDMA". Indeed, from WiFi to WiMAX and 3G, "Pervasive Computing" would completely claim the W-LAN - W-MAN - W-WAN spectrum, and fulfill its dream of stealing both seamlessness and security from the 3GSM DNA, locking a firmer than ever grip on the femtocell level, where a massive herd of wild devices roam not always peacefully.

Convergence ahead, at last ? Universal Mobile Telecommunication System ahead, at last ? Negociation ahead, for sure.


* "1Giga 4G" or rather 100 Mbps for mobile apps and 1 Gbps for fixed apps.

Pervasive Korea in US, China, Vietnam...

SK Telecom seems to speed up its internationalization process, more than doubling its subscriber base in Vietnam within one year to reach the 1M mark and targeting 4M by the end of 2008, which would at last sound like a significant position overseas.
But investors tend to be more impressed by less spectacular moves on more demanding markets and Helio doesn't seem to claim many customers in the US. Yet, SKT's UI, T-PAK, is coming up on some Motorola handsets soon. And NATE just locked interesting deals on mobile search engines with Google, and on telematics and in-car entertainment with GM Daewoo cars (TTM 2008) : telematics through NATE Drive, movies through Cizle, music through MelOn... Korea's leading cellco is eventually leveraging on its Jeju Telematics trials*.
Middleware, content and enablers are a surer bet than airwaves, even if Korea Inc keeps pushing its own technos : strong presence during the 2006 China Int’l DAB/DMB Forum & Expo in Beijing, recent deal clinched on WiBro in the US**...
Airwaves do cross the seas, but the other way : W-CDMA / HSDPA were already gaining momentum thanks to SKT and KTF, and now LG Telecom announces GSM-enabled phones by the end of the year. Of course, LGT will invest KRW 400 bn in EV-DO rA over 3 years (including 170 BS in Seoul), but only 15 will be spent by the end of 2006 instead of the 40 planned earlier.


* see "Jeju Telematics celebrates the wedding of GPS and DMB" (20060510)
** Neupara from Columbia, MD (neupara.com), chose POSDATA for its 2.3GHz WiBro trial in the US. Posco's subsidiary joins Samsung in the US market and Neupara keeps pushing Korean technologies after T-DMB in India. Its CEO, Mr John J. Shin, happens to be a Korean-American.

T Login for HSDPA, EV-DO, WiBro and YouNameIt

SK Telecom having a knack for new brands and new technos, customers must be struggling to keep the pace with the operator's launching machine.
T Login isn't Deutsche Telekom's latest Business Unit but a key to all SKT wireless data accesses (3G EV-DO, HSDPA, WiBro... or why not TD-SCDMA tomorrow* ?) for all devices (laptops, PMPs, digital cameras, car navigators...).
And which common denominator connectivity do you think they picked up before embedded solutions - T Login inside - are available ? Neither Bluetooth nor a vulgar 802.1x wannabe, but Korea's ultimate entry point : the USB.
Yet another proof of SKT's priorities, the first T Login modems will start with HSDPA and add WiBro on time for Xmas and at full throttle 3 months later**. Thanks to KRW 190,000 subsidies, retail prices are slashed to KRW 50,000 or about $ 50, which reflects the importance of this new entry point. SKT decided to boost the buzz by recruiting 30 "quality reviewers" on the web besides the usual pilot testers. Service rates range from KRW 29,900 per month for 2GB (+ KRW 184 per additional MB) to KRW 45,000 for 3GB (+ KRW 123). To be compared to, say, a basic fee of KRW 33,000 for Hanaro Telecom's unlimited Fiber LAN access for cyber apartments.
Overall market is estimated at 2 million people, with the usual suspects mobile office workers and road warriors among core targets, but also students because the group intends to embed its major entertainment brands MelOn, cyworld & Co. too - hell, they even offer dodoris as prelaunch incentives ! In a country where PC cards failed, HSDPA does stand a chance and SKT can leverage on security advantages as well as roaming perspectives for business users.



* since the techno is about to enter Korea (see "TD-SCDMA in Korea" - 20060901)

** No S-DMB in sight and anyway TU media didn't communicate much after the launch of free T-DMB services while KTF claimed 164,000 customers end of May.

Long Term Evolution and short term profits

NTT DoCoMo keep pushing LTE, 3GPP's new label for Super3G (beyond HSDPA and HSUPA - the last step before 4G), and sets an aggressive calendar : specs completed by the end of next year, TTM by the year of 2009.
Not far from DoCoMo's home turf, both KTF and SKT launched HSDPA and WiBro. The former techno is meant to become nationwide and the latter devoted to dense urban areas only... which means pretty much the same both sides of the Han river. But for the moment, WiBro is only a laptop thing (over 300 bucks per PC card plus a 30 per month plan). Since the Korean netiquette prevents people from using their handsets in the subway (definitely a change for the better for passengers), I'm not so sure everyone will connect everywhere that soon. I'd bet a few more bucks on mini mobile TV players for short sessions. At home, even HSDPA cannot beat FTTH in the appateu areas.
Did you know Korea still represented 37% of all license fees collected by Qualcomm last year ? No wonder their armies of lobbyists keep redeeming their Morning Calm miles to and from Incheon these days. Microsoft also remain under the Korean regulator's fire as well but still have more to lose in Europe, where Viviane Reding could furthermore help broadband multiservice providers catch up financially with MNOs (international roaming charges definitely cannot remain that high that long).

Wanted : a stronger Asian CDMA alliance

In a rather Vodafonish / DoCoMish move, SK Telecom recently secured $1bn worth of China Unicom bonds - the equivalent of 6.6% in shares (if converted next year)*. The vehicle of this partnership, China Unicom Limited (CUHK), owns 100% of China Unicom Corporation Limited (CUCL), a mainland operator strong of 130 M subscribers of which 35 M are CDMA.
SKT seems to claim the leadership in CDMA-3G-and-beyond across the world, their US M-VNO Helio being another key part of this vast jigsaw puzzle. Korea's leading cellco didn't get the 10% it wanted but had to do something : it can't support the evolutions of an ailing CDMA community on its own, China pushes TD-SCDMA and Japan's NTT DoCoMo drafted its rival KTF in an impressive regional W-CDMA alliance.
SKT are also launching WiBro these days in Seoul, a few weeks after KTF** and also with Samsung. The Korean manufacturer is said to eye the Indian market for this "han-made" techno but doesn't bet everything on the same horse : a dual mode WiMAX-GSM handset will be up for grabs next year.

* that was the only event during SEK 2006 (Security and Content Exhibition Korea - www.sek.co.kr).
** see "Commercial HSDPA live in Korea" (20060517)

Commercial HSDPA live in Korea

SK Telecom launched its HSDPA service in 25 cities yesterday and intends to cover 84 by the end of the year. KTF will follow in June with 50 cities.
Dubbed 3.5G and announced at 5.76 to 14.4 mbps rates, HSDPA will be limited to 1.8 mbps at the beginning due to the lack of handsets : the only one available right now is a W200 Samsung slider model costing 800,000 wons without subsidies. SKT expect handsets to allow 7.2 mbps rates next year and 14.4 in 2008.
W-CDMA was almost shunted in Korea, but KTF are eventually leveraging on their partnership with NTT DoCoMo for the World Cup : as the official sponsor of the Korean Football Association, they're advertising about successful roaming video calls between members of the official supporter group (Red Devils). Meanwhile, WiBro trials started rather discretely in Seoul : only a few southern areas like Gangnam-gu or Bundang are covered and a WiBro Bus* will roam the streets to draft testers. Subscriptions are expected to be twice the cost of a fixed broadband connection.
As for DMB, Korea Pool, the joint negociating arm of all three broadcasters, clinched a deal with InFront to make sure all 64 games are broadcasted. No one will lose and certainly not consumers.

* KT WiBro Experience Bus : www.ktwibrobus.com. Note the pedagogy of WiBro : allIP + Triple Play (Data, Communication, Media) = Personal Broadband.

Saving private Korea Inc - back to subsidies, but no way back

Better late than sorry. The MIC eventually allowed cellcos to subsidize handsets. Korea Inc can now boost DMB, WiBro and W-CDMA technologies at home. Bad news for SK Telecom's competitors*, good news for Samsung, LG & Co, who would have preferred this help much earlier for their international competitiveness**. Yet, note that debitel's DMB trials in Germany*** have just been confirmed, along with a nationwide coverage in 2007 (8 cities for the World Cup, 12 by the end of 2006).
The MIC set a few rules for subsidies (only 62% of subscribers can enjoy them now, and 18 to 24 month will be required between each favor)... with the notable exception of next gen handsets (DMB, W-CDMA, WiBro...). To avoid a loss of face, the Government intends to monitor the process even more closely than it does with real estate, thanks to a weird kind of reverse auction.
This Monday morning, March the 27th, each MNO will give its subsidy grid to the regulator and no change will be allowed untill April 27. You can give more but can never lower your level of subsidy.
Analysts expect a reasonable start (around KRW 100 k per handset - about $100), but all gloves are off... which might help those who'll purchase the brand new ring / wrist phones recently announced by manufacturers.
But the device of the week was presented by Samsung at their Mobile Solution Forum in Taipei. It's not a handset but the World's first SSD (Solid-State Drive) laptop : the 32 Gigabyte flash-chip drive is four times lighter than a 30 Gigabyte HDD, and the manufacturer expects the technology to snatch 30% of the laptop market with a $200 unit price by 2008 (the price is set**** at $500 right now).



* even if KTF will turn a few heads with KTF Technologies Inc's ultra-slim phone (7.9 millimeters - MP3 player - 1.3-megapixel camera - electronic dictionary with over 300,000 English words...).
** see "Subsidies : boosting subscriptions of exports ?" (20051026).
*** see "CeBIT unnovations" (20060312)
**** I don't say "fixed" because Samsung joined Hynix in sending employees in jail for price-fixing in the semi-con sector (the $300M fine paid last year didn't protect the individuals working for the company).

Play it again, Samsung ?

Mainland Chinese mobile TV operators ordered 500,000 Samsung DMB-T phones, but in Hong-Kong SAR / Xiang-gang, big figures don't necessarily mean good news :

1. Hutchison Whampoa sold a 10% stake in 3, but to Goldman Sachs and for a lousy 420 million euros. They keep delaying the IPO and see their deal with Skype fall in the shadow of Telefonica's "Plug'n Talk" VoIPo3G solution (even if, for the beginning, it is limited to laptops & PCs through USB & Memory Sticks).
   
2. PCCW Wireless added 310,000 new 3G subscribers in January, but without disclosing the cost of their welcome packs (six month of line rental fees, 10,000 mn of local calls per month, unlimited SMS, unlimited 3G browsing... why did only 310,000 take it ?).

The Chinese jackpot was just one part of Samsung's PRsenal in Barcelona : the kings of crossbar confirmed their ambitions for DMB-T in Europe (trials with TF1 - Bouygues Telecom starting later this month, SGH-P900 on time for the 2006 World Cup, undisclosed negociations with several MNOs...), but will also be ready for DVB-H (SGH-P910) and MediaFLO. Besides, Koreans (for a start) will enjoy an exciting SPH-B4100 which allows simultaneous T-DMB and S-DMB*. There's also fish to fry about Microsoft (i320 with Windows Mobile 5 and a keyboard), HSDPA (Z560) and naturally WiBro (a new device - M8000 - and a new deal : Telecom Italia will use Samsung Wibro solutions next year).

To celebrate in music, Samsung decided to showcase a supposedly customer-oriented (but MNO / CSP driven) SecureMMC application lyrically dubbed "Music download service supporting OMA v2 DRM & MMC with Beep Science"... Play it again, Sam ?

Another player put his cards on the table : Option exhibited GlobeTrotter FUSION+ HSDPA (a HSDPA/UMTS/EDGE / Wi-Fi / PEPPERONI / ANCHOVIES combo Data Card) and GlobeTrotter GT MAX (a tri-band HSDPA / 3G UMTS Data Card already snatched by Cingular GlobalConnect for a promising new plan : unlimited at home + 100Mb abroad). Down the corridor, CSI Wireless tried to plug their fixed wireless (GSM or TDMA) phones : Series 405 (basic) and Series 415 (speaker phone capability + internet access & email via PC).

As expected, HSDPA is getting mainstream (ie Intel working hand in hand with the GSMA to boost embedded HSDPA in laptops) and HSUPA starts making noise far beyond the darkest alleys.

As expected also, "mobile TV" is more often heard than "wireless data". But even if "mobile goes TV" looks strong in the charts, this is only 3GSM radio, and we soon will move back to the "TV goes mobile" tune**.

* 2 channels at the same time, in other words. On the same mini-screen ? Korean will soon outclass Japan in miniaturization. When you think Ninendo consider adding a mobile TV tuner to their DS Portable gaming systems...

** the Murdoch lads managed to sell once again their Sky By Mobile (skybymobile.com) concept. This BSkyB's mobile counterpart to Sky By Broadband leverages on the whole Sky machine : Sky TV by mobile, Sky News, Sky Bet, Sky Digital, Sky Sports (including the Baclays Premiership and UEFA Champions League)...

SK Telecom - the year of the milking cow

I must confess financial data tend to bore me. SK Telecom's figures for 2005 look nice enough, even after retracting SK Teletech's sale*.
Considering the competitive circumstances, keeping a 50.9% market share and adding 750,000 subs inspires respect. The success of Wireless Internet (26.6% of all cellular service revenue) should be tampered by the vastness of the definition of "wireless internet", but no one can contest the achievements of MelOn and Mobile Cyworld, or the ingeniosity of the MNO's data plans.
2005 was yet another exciting year for them (even when followed from this not so exciting blog), but also a year of restructuration with spectacular changes in management and a significant marketing rationalization (the marketing expense to sales revenue ratio went down from 17.2% to 19.2%).
2006 should be less juicy from a financial point of view : SKT must invest in HSDPA, face the competition of DMB-T and Wibro at home, and push abroad... but the year could prove much more exciting from a strategical point of view, especially in the contents / partnerships arenas and in the US**.

* see "Hardware behind, hard work ahead" (20050504)

** see "Hello HELIO - here comes the sun" (20051118)

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

CES2006 - beyond Gates, real openings

Billy Boy's pathetic remarks about Google's tendency to overhype future announcements (look who's talking) made the headlines, but I'm eager to see how T-Mobile performs next march with their HSDPA laptops. Less glam but more subs ?
Quite impressed also by Samsung's massive nextgen overload : Blue-ray, MPEG4, Wibro, MediaFLO, GPRS/EVDO S/T-DMB, DVB-H... you name it ! Plus another striking partnership : after Vodafone in the mobile world (by the way, Sammy just demonstrated HSDPA at 3.6Mbps), Comcast and set-top boxes.
They're starting 2006 at the top, but can they keep the pace ?