Four days in South Korea last week opened my eyes to the endless possibilities that both mobile and broadband have to offer markets like the UK... it's just waiting to be exploited to the full by agencies and marketers when it hits consumers in your neck of the woods in a few years time. Take mobile TV for instance...
Terrestrial free-to-air mobile TV is already widely available in South Korea thanks to the likes of providers such as SK Telecom. The handset looks pretty much like any other (although local brands such as Samsung and LG proliferate). The only difference is a slightly bigger extendable aerial and the capacity to turn the viewing screen sideways.
The quality is quite extraordinary. Much better resolution than I anticipated. I thought it was going to be like one of those cheap analogue portable TV's you can buy in the UK which frankly always have a crap picture and patchy sound. Not so with the (up to) 4G digital mobile TV. The pictures are very clear and the sound was superb. I watched about 10 minutes of the news on local channel SBS and the picture / sound never faded once.
In addition to free-to-air programming, there is also a subscription based model for satellite channels (such as ESPN). There are already over 1 million subscribers to this paid-for service in South Korea and it's growing rapidly.
For advertisers, you can either pay an additional premium to get your ad out to the mobile audience on top of the traditional TV option or alternatively you can pay exclusively for it (which opens up a realm of possibilities for advertisers who previously couldn't afford conventional TV campaigns).
The advances in terms of broadband are also pretty spectacular. The native IM service in South Korea is called NateOn. It was launched only about 2 years ago but it is already bigger in South Korea than MSN Messenger and is used by an incredible 91% of all people aged between 20 and 29. So how has it managed to be so successful ? Mainly because it's become a hybrid of all the best bits of IM, social networks and mobile (once again its owned by SK).
Pretty revolutionary stuff, coming your way very soon (although secretly I still think that 'squirt and dry' Panasonic electronic toilet in my hotel room was by far the most amazing thing I saw).
Steve Blakeman
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Member since: 03 Jun 2008
Last login: 27 Oct 2008
Total Posts: 59
