Mobile Korea

T-DMB (Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) Phone meets the golden age. In second quarter, the sales of T-DMB Phone increased about 3.4% comparing to first quarter.

That is interesting results because total number of 3G service phone user keep increasing and KTF, one of MNO in Korea, focus their capability on 3G services such as Video call.
However, most of T-DMB phone is concentrated on 2G service!

KTF tries to advertise the diverse function of 3G service.
By contrast, SKT and LGT, MNO in Korea focusing their ability on 2G service, promote their 2G service with excellent design and T-DMB service. Prada Phone is a good example.


Some experts said there will be keen competition between 3G and 2G service soon. It is very hard to estimate how situation will develop because this competition has never happened before.

If you concentrate your attention on how Korean TMT market is changed, you can get some insights about how your home country will be changed.

Prada Phone has made its market debut in Korea about a month ago. I was also one of the people who were expecting it to come and recently I found an interesting article on Prada phone.

In Korea, it was provided initially by LG Telecom (No 3 Player in Korea with Market share of 17%. The leading player SK Telecom has 50% of M/S and KTF the 2nd Player around 33%) followed by SK Telecom. It is regarded by many industry analysts that LG Telecom is making the best use of its sister company, LG Electronics who developed Prada phone with Prada.

According to the market statistics released by LG Telecom, most of the Prada Phone was bought by the group who were in their 20s and 30s. 80% of the Prada Phone sold since its debut were in this group and 40s group followed who accounted 11%.

The ratio between the sexes was Male (60%) and Female (40%). It can be explained that most of the early adopter were male dominated group. But the report said that the Female customers were rising sharply these days.

Since its launch in May, 25,000 Prada phone has been sold for the period less than a month. LG Telecom and SK Telecom both said that they are now selling more than 1,000 units per day. LG Electronics expects that the total sales target of 200,000 this year looks like an easily achievable goal.

To keep its luxurious image, LG Electronics plays strict marketing strategies and hence can not see the advertisement in the main advertisement medium. Instead they are focusing heavily on ‘Celebrity Marketing’ and many of the Top celebrities were invited to use the Prada Phone including Sophie Marceau of France and Jiwoo Choi of Korea.