Thursday, January 22, 2009
Monday, December 17, 2007
Moved!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Update on mobile TV in Korea
Today I have read an interesting article about the current situation on the Korean mobile TV market. It is motivated by the recent event, that TU Media has been able to acquire the simultaneous re-transmisson rights from MBC. This represents a big step for TU Media but it comes two and a half years too late.
As TU Media started operation mid 2005 it tried to acquire simultaneous re-transmission rights from broadcasters. This means that S-DMB viewers would be able to watch popular dramas and shows from fixed TV at the same time as on fixed TV. These contents are the most popular contents on both, fixed and mobile TV. However, at that time broadcasters were reluctant to share these contents because they wanted to use it for their own T-DMB service. Due to that S-DMB had to focus on other contents like sports and news. But the lack of “killer” contents from fixed TV hindered S-DMB development (as shown in the graphic above). Until today it had been able to acquire approximately 1.26 million subscribers. But according to TU Media they need approximately 2.5 million subscribers to be profitable. As a result, as reported two weeks ago, SK Telecom is thinking about limiting its involvement in TU Media.
But also T-DMB is struggling to build a profitable business. Despite more than seven million T-DMB devices in
Experts are blaming policy for allowing two different mobile TV standards and businesses. Their competition was one of the main obstacles that mobile TV could not develop its full potential. So is mobile TV doomed in
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
I'm moving...
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Looking forward to meeting you@
The mobile and entertainment industries are increasingly merging and next week, from December 5th to 7th, a very interesting mobile and media business conference sponsored by Informa telecoms & media is about to take place in Suntec/Singapore. On Wednesday the “mobile TV Asia Summit” is taking place, followed by the two days event of “
The event is tagged: “Where media meets mobile in
The conferences will feature agenda setting keynote sessions, and streams discussing the most exciting industry issues. It’s truly an honor for me to be selected to chair the “Mobile TV Asia Summit” on Wednesday December 5th. I will be the first to speak with the title, “Accelerating the Uptake of Mobile TV in
For more information on the events visit here.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
S-DMB and TU Media rumored to be in trouble
There are several factors for missing commercial success of S-DMB, some of them are:
1. Targeting the mass market SK Telecom has underestimated the importance of acquiring popular contents from terrestrial TV. Upon the launch of S-DMB it had been too naïve and expected to get rights for retransmitting contents from the broadcasters. However with T-DMB in the pipeline they had been reluctant to share these contents.
2. Launching the satellite (it had been launched in cooperation with a Japanese company MBCo) and building the infrastructure almost by itself required significant funding, estimated to be about 250 million USD.
3. When entering the market it relied too much on existing skills and thus pursued a subscription based model, making a success on the mass market very unlikely.
4. Also Korean government is not free from blame. It issued licenses for mobile TV to two different parties with a diametrically different approach. Subscription based S-DMB and free T-DMB. Due to this both sides could not exploit the full market potential of mobile TV in
5. Being direct competitors in the mobile market KTF and LG have been reluctant to promote S-DMB, because it is a service of a direct competitor.
1. Content is king – it has to be tailored to your targeted audience else your business is doomed. If targeting the mass market popular formats from TV is crucial.
2. Initial investments have to be balanced carefully and should not burden the future development too much.
3. Especially as an MNOs may not underestimate the importance of the right content.
Monday, November 26, 2007
The Korean playground is virtual
Approximately 62% of the participants use the internet 1-2 hours a day. This may not sound a lot to you but in Korea even young school children return from school around 6 p.m. or even later. Subtracting time for having dinner and eventual homework these two hours represent probably 80%-90% of their free time during one day. This is underlined by the fact that 92% surf from home. What do the kids do online on their virtual playground? Well the same thing we used to do on real playgrounds, i.e. playing (39% play online games) and meeting friends (27% work on their “Minihompi” or visit their friends’ “Minihompis”). In connection to that it is not surprising that CyWorld is the second most popular website (29%) just after naver (57%).
This trend underlines the appearance of a truly digital youth. However in Korea it gets an almost dangerous dimension which ultimately will further increase problems like internet addiction. On the other hand this early embrace of the internet and its virtual worlds is a good explanation why Koreans usually are regarded as tech savvy, which enhances the development of new services and businesses in the TMT sector.
Addition to Friday’s posting
As a supplement of Friday’s posting I have found the official video press release on www.futurizekorea.com – another interesting technology related blog about Korea. Have a look at this video, which shows the video phone application in action.