Posdata to launch IPTV in California

POSDATA is an Internet and network service subidiary. This company is from the largest steel producer in Korea called POSCO. Recently, it has been diversifying its portfolio to diverse network equipment(such as Mobile WiMax). They have the experience of doing content business such as animation and traffic information in Korea. Also, they have experience in building the IPTV system of Hanarotelecom. With these experiences and local marketing activities, their primary goal is to dominate the market before others get in on the business.
POSDATA is aiming at approxiamately 1 million ethnic Koreans living in the west coast of U.S, California. This year september, they will start Internet-Protocol TV services (IPTV) by setting up joint venture with Celrun, a set-top box maker, and Acanettv, a digital TV platform provider. POSDATA will settle their Internet TV station based on Los Angeles. The initial capital of the joint ventrue is to be $ 104 million. The name and their brand of the new company will be announced soon and the firms did not breakdown their investment but POSDATA will be the leader of consortium. This is another hard challenge for a Korean IT firms to offer services business on the U.S because previous attempts of other firms had mostly failed. The giant conglormerate, SK telecom, is an example of many struggles of signing up subscribers for its Helio mobile phone services in the American soil for several years. So POSDATA made their business strategy by targeting the huge Korean people first to minimize the risk. Also, they are waiting for other local TV companies in California to party their consortium to share both fincancial burden and opportuinties. California has the largest korean ethincs residents in the world. According to Korean embassy, there are about 340,000 legal and illegal Koreans living in Los Angeles. There are already several Korean-language cabel channels in serivce but none of them has video-on-demand service of popular Korean TV programs. However, POSDATA said, Korean dramas and entertainment shows will be the main items of the new IPTV serivce. After that, education, shopping, karaoke and games will be shown. IPTV refers to paid IV services that use home broadband Internet lines to receive IV signals. It is becoming popular in many nations such as Western Europe and Hong Kong since it offers video-on-demand movies and other advanced functions.
In my personal opinion, I think POSDATA will succeed in their strategy in focusing on Korean residents in California. Since Koreans are strong in keeping their ethincity, they will be glad to have a new serivce on Korean TV shows with more conveinency. While experiencing Korean-American residents, I am sure that they would find the right taste of pure American needs. I think niche on Korean residents and gradual expansion of the TV market will bring success to POSDATA.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2008/04/123_22704.html

20620042 - Entry #6

Apple's small failure in Europe

Apple is famous for it's innovative product; iphone. Apple was survived from their big failure in computer industry by the success of iphone. But their wonderful product is not effective in Europe market. There are many factors of this short period failure. At first, iphone's price is too high to European. Actually, there are world's mobile leading company, the Nokia. And Nokia sells their mobile phone at very low price compared to that of Apple. Next, the monopoly of mobile carrier in each european country is a cause of Apple's damage. In European countries, government allow only one mobile carrier. It's very different environment to Apple. Because there are many mobile carriers in America. And because of this monopoly, Apple cannot adapt to the need of mobile market.
Consequently, now there are many inventories of iphone. Although now Apple is selling their old iphone at a bargain price, the utility is too low. If Apple launch their new iphone same way, they must fail in the market. And this may result in a serious damage to Apple. I think they have to research the mobility of European market. Maybe they have some self-contentment of their high technology. But they completely guessed wrong about the tendency of European consumers.
Through this failure, Korean companies must learn the importance of prudent market research. Maybe Apple didn't do enough research about the habits of European people. They only consider the function and design of their product. And now there are many global companies in Korea. And they contribute to Korea economy very well. Their products are so popular and effective in all around of the world. But when they don't do enough market research, I'll give assurance, they will fail. Of course now they do very well in global market, but I think they have to learn some lessons from Apple's failure.

reference: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081000500950.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives

entry 6 20700067

MySpace offers site designed for Korea

          One of the most well-known personal homepage provider MySpace is now heading its way to Korea, where young Korean generation's internet entertainment is highly achieved through such activities. It's a part of the ongoing process of MySpace's effort to expand internationally, and in order to differenciate, they have also included some of the new features to its Korean version MySpace, so called "Minilog."
          Korean youths like to have their toughts and daily stories to be written down on their mini homepages and decorate them; Minilog features enable that kind of activities on MySpace. Also, color blue, which MySpace traditonally has been using, has been softened to make Korean users to feel more comfortable and intimated by the design.
          Since there is a company called Cyworld in Korea which provides almost same service as MySpace does, it would face a tense competition in Korea. Cyworld is already well-known for its high quality social-networking system through so called, "mini-homepy" and has been used widely by both young and old generations.
          According to the article, the chief executive of MySpace stated that the company has cooperated with local specialists to imply Korean social culture to its web. He also said that they are hoping MySpace tp be "...a way for Koreans to connect with Americans and others around the world" (BusinessWeek).
          I'm currently using Cyworld, and few days ago, it introduced a new software to upload pictures to the mini-homepy. With the new features, I can decorate, resize, put text in it, adjust the colors and more. Using Cyworld has been always easy, and because of its user-friendly interface and ability to connect great number of people all toegher, it became one of young generation's must-have culture. I tried MySpace when I was in the states; however, since I was so used to Cyworld, I thought some of the features that MySpace has were quite useless or inconvenience. To get Koreans' attention and have them to use MySpace would have to go through a lot of deep analysis and strategies. If they could provide something that Cyworld hasn't done yet, I believe there is always a great potential in any social-networking industry on the web.

Reference;
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/tech/D901UJT03.htm

20601008 - Entry 6th

KTF seeks to bolster its global business

I recently read an article announcing KTF’s global business. It told me that KTF is now seeking to bolster its global business by investing its money and operating its service in emerging markets with high growth potential. It is certainly a good idea of the company because firms operating in our nation will not manage to survive unless they seek and develop markets outside of this country.

KTF is the nation’s second largest mobile carrier. According to a statistical resource in 2007, KTF has 12772526 members out of 39703210 in market total. Simply thinking, KTF is a successful company and it is making lots of money by its mobile service. In addition, a new kind of service brand ‘SHOW’ has brought lots of new customers to KTF. It is sure that KTF is doing well and it won’t lose its position unless it makes some critical mistakes. However, the situation isn’t that simple. Although it is performing its service pretty well and it is making its profits quite good, there are some difficulties. Frankly speaking, KTF is not the only one who is facing some uncontrollable difficulties. Mobile carriers in Korea – KTF, SKT, LGT – is now facing a situation pretty much alike to a war. Because the domestic market is already been saturated, it is really difficult to make a new customer. For example, If there are 90 people who can use mobile phones out of 100 and the competing firms has already made 88 customers in total, it is impossible to make new customers. It is simply true in mobile service market in Korea. There aren’t any left spaces that the competing firms can take over. Consequently, this brought a war among the companies. They’ve been having ad-wars, trying to attract customers of other firms to change their suppliers. Also, they’ve been persuading customers of other companies to use their service, providing new cellphones in low price. But, this is non-sense. It doesn’t make any difference. Even though one company successes to steal other firms customers, it won’t be so profitable to them. They’ll have to pay the cellphone price for their new customers, and they’ve already used lots of money in advertisements and sales promotion. Simply, the only way to get out of this bloody environment is to expand its service areas to overseas. From this point of view, KTF’s movement is quite wise and appropriate.


KTF has not mad any significant actions in global business. The only impressive movement it has made is the major investment abroad with the acquisition of Malaysian 3G startup U Mobile with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo, both investing a combined $200 million for a 33 percent stake in U Mobile. However, even though its movement is not that big, it will bring some positive effects. The thing is, KTF actually performed an overseas investment, not just having ideas about it. This really is a good sign. They’ve actually tried to find a way out of the red ocean, domestic market. Furthermore, if KTF successes its venture in overseas, other competitors – SKT and LGT – will try to expand their service areas to overseas as well. This will somewhat reduce the tightness in domestic market, which is a positive effect. In addition, if these three companies make success in outside of Korea, they will be able to get revenues from outside of Korea, which means they have outer sources of money to provide quality services in Korea, and which means the service fees will eventually decline. This is why most of mobile customers in Korea is welcoming KTF’s adventure.


Reference : http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSOD&mid=sec&sid1=108&oid=044&aid=0000072041


20700273 - Entry 6