Everything About Mobiles

According to a recently published report by Korea IDC entitled, 'HSDPA, and market analysis and prospect for wireless broadband (Wibro) in Korea,' HSDPA will acquire 7.4% of the entire cellular phone market in 2007. This rate will jump drastically to 14% in 2008, 20.5% in 2009, and finally reach 32.6% in 2011, which will correspond to approximately 14.92 million users. Though its sales rate merely amounted to 0.2% in 2006, it is projected to rise to 38.8% by 2011.

USIM, universal subscriber identification module, will play a pivotal role in developing HSDPA. This chip currently uses a locking device, but the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) is making efforts to unlock it for the purpose of achieving complete openness. The USIM chip, which stores mobile communication information as well as personal data, will be installed in mobile phones.

MIC plans to unlock the locking device on all HSDPA and HSUPA mobile phones by 2008. To this end, the Ministry will set up a USIM team, which will include business and consumer organizations. Achieving USIM openness is expected to expand the market presence of HSDPA.

By the end of this year, HSDPA will be upgraded to HSUPA. HSUPA, whose maximum speed is 5.76 Mbps, will signify a dramatic improvement from HSDPA, whose current speed is 384 Kbps. Meanwhile, KT, a Wibro company, is scheduled to build Wibro Version 2, a network that supports an upload speed of 8 Mbps and a download speed of 34.6 Mbps. Accordingly, the speed competition between the two technologies is expected to intensify.

5 million Wibro subscribers - possibility?
Wibro is expected to acquire one hundred and thirty thousand subscribers in 2007, six hundred thousand in 2008, 1.4 million in 2009, and finally 3.9 million in 2011. At that point, the difference in the number of subscriber between Wibro and HSDPA is expected to be only marginal.

Largely, this will result from the conservative investment and marketing strategies that Wibro companies such as KT and SK Telecom employ as a result of their lack of confidence in the prospects of this business. If the market becomes more favorable upon introducing killer applications and popular terminals, Wibro-related investment and marketing will grow. Furthermore, according to the aforementioned report, KT will aggressively build infrastructures in its effort to secure subscribers if the market takes these positive turns. Should this happen, the report predicts that the number of subscribers will reach eight hundred thousand by 2008 and 5 million by 2011.

The report also predicts that the relations between Wibro and HSDPA will remain complementary rather than competitive because HSDPA is better than the Wibro with regard to mobility and accessibility, while the latter is better for data transmission purposes.

According to Han In-Kyu, a senior researcher at Korea IDC, "price will be the most important factor in deciding the success of the respective technologies because communication costs per household are increasing as Wibro and HSDPA/HSUPA continue to provide new services and contents. Because mobile phone internet service is provided in package plans, service providers should consider offering (partial) fixed-price plans to lower the cost for households."

"To develop profitable services," he emphasizes, "cooperation between various content and terminal (equipment) providers must be strengthened." He also points out that although mobile shopping and mobile lectures have been tested, the lack of appropriate killer applications had hampered their success. This, according to him, is a problem that must be addressed as soon as possible.

Byung-Ming Oh (ZDNet Korea)