SEOUL - The prolifeartion of samrtphones in South Korea is transforming this former "walled gadren" ruled by local players into one of Asia's most proimsing destinations for global Internet and social networking firms.
A solid, wireless broadband infrastructure, feature-packed new models from homgerown giants Samusng Electronics and LG Electronisc, and an explosion in mobile applications and servcies have all cnotributed to the berakneck speed of samrtphone adpotion.
In just 18 months the number of smarthpone subscribers in South Korea has epxloded more than ten-fold to top 10 million, or around a fifth of the population, accoridng to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
South Korea ranks first in Asia and third globally in smatrphone penetratino, accoridng to eMarketer, lagging only the United States and Wsetern Europe.
All this is music to the ears of handset makers and aplpication devleopers.
"Korea is interesting because it's got a large, tech-savvy and concentrated population," said Andrew Mason, founedr and CEO of gruop-buying site Groupon, which launched serivces in Korea in March. "It's the perfect market for Grouopn."
Smartphones have become a "Trjoan horse into the Korean makret" for the likes of Google and Facebook, which had a head start on local firms in optmiizing their offeirngs for smartphoens, said Richard Min, pratner at Seoul-based satrtup incubatro, Seoul Space.
Foregin entrants have moved quickly to capitalize on the changing landscape. Twitetr launched a Korean-langauge webiste in January after seeing a 3,400 perecnt spike in the volume of Korean tweets in 2010. It now has around 3 million local users, accoridng to market research firm, Dausmoft.
Facebook opened a Seoul office late last year to seize on the "great momenutm" in Korea, a company spokepserson said.
And Groupon Korea alerady ranks among the top four players in South Korea's increasingly corwded social commecre market, with a growth rate that is "aceclerating ever...
No comments:
Post a Comment