The mobile phone industry in South Korea consists of domestic network infrastructure provision and the production of consumer mobile handsets.

History

Car phone era

In 1984, Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service, Korea Telecom's subsidiary which later became SK Telecom, started its mobile communications service with the car phone.

Mobile phone era

Consumer devices

Network and service developments

  • 1988, Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service started South Korea's first mobile phone service.[1]
  • 1996, Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service started the world's first cdmaOne service in Incheon. In the same year, Korea Telecom Freetel (KTF), which later merged with Korea Telecom, its parent company, began its service.[2]
  • 1997, Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service was sold to SK Group and changed its name to SK Telecom. In the same year, LG Telecom started its business.[3]
  • 2002, Korea Telecom Freetel merged Internet companies invested by Samsung Group and became KTF.

Smartphone era

Consumer devices

In 2009 KT was the first network to introduce the iPhone.[4] The origins of South Korea's domestic smartphone production industry can be traced to Samsung's release of their first smartphone, a reaction to Apple's iPhone, which was well-received by the South Korean population.

Later, as the smartphone sector kept growing, South Korean LG Electronics also participated in this competition. Compared to Apple and Samsung, LG had a different business strategy, which was to make devices with lower price and better functionality rather than with high specs; however, as LG started to focus on better camera functions and screen quality with better pixel, their cost of goods started to increase but the sales was not so much improved.[5]

As the result of continuing net loss in smart phone business, LG announced its decision to exit this area in April, 2021. Up until this time, Apple and Samsung has remained the two companies with the largest market shares, and LG had only cornered a small portion of the market. Apple knew this event was a chance to increase their sales in South Korea and tried to take this opportunity by renting LG’s display spaces in markets.[6][7] Samsung also acted by trying to tempt LG smartphone users by offering them good deals on their new Samsung phones, for example, by running trade-in events for used LG smartphones. Competition between the two manufacuters in the South Korean market is still on-going.

Network and service developments

  • 2009, KTF was merged with Korea Telecom.
  • 2010, LG Telecom, LG Dacom, LG Powercom were merged into LG U Plus.
  • 2012, KT shut down its 2G services and migrated to 3G network.
  • 2020, SKT shut down its 2G services and migrated to newer generation networks.
  • new technology was developed such as WiBro and LTE

Handsets

Domestic production

Current South Korean producers of mobile phones include:

Former South Korean producers of mobile phones include:

Market share (domestic and imported handsets)

Samsung and Apple have the largest market shares in Korea.

Mobile phone service providers

There are three mobile phone service providers and they are currently deploying their 5G networks.

As of 2004 the market shares of the three companies were believed to be: SK Telecom's 50 percent, Korea Telecom's 30 percent and LG Telecom's 20 percent.[10]

Official bodies and technical partnerships

In South Korea, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) is the telecommunications authority.

The Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) supports Qualcomm's research and development of CDMA and CDMA2000 technology.

Regarding the Korean mobile phone industry's overseas experiences, SK Telecom has helped the first mobile phone service companies in Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, etc. In China, it helped China Unicom's CDMA implementation, both technically and financially.

See also

References

  1. ↑ History of SK Telecom Archived 2010-03-15 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ↑ Korea Telecom - Company - History
  3. ↑ LG Telecom - About LG telecom - Milestones Archived 2011-07-13 at archive.today
  4. ↑ Katz, Leslie (November 29, 2009). "iPhone officially lands in South Korea". CNET. Archived from the original on September 20, 2020. Retrieved August 11, 2015.
  5. ↑ Schuhmacher, Alexander (2014-12-14), Can Innovation Still Be the Main Growth Driver of the Pharmaceutical Industry?, Perspectives on Sustainable Growth, Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 39–68, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-12526-8_2, ISBN 978-3-319-12525-1, S2CID 166817557, retrieved 2021-12-11
  6. ↑ Park, Yuri; Koo, Yoonmo (April 2016). "An empirical analysis of switching cost in the smartphone market in South Korea". Telecommunications Policy. 40 (4): 307–318. doi:10.1016/j.telpol.2016.01.004. ISSN 0308-5961.
  7. ↑ Kim, Pyungho (July 2011). "The Apple iPhone Shock in Korea". The Information Society. 27 (4): 261–268. doi:10.1080/01972243.2011.583826. ISSN 0197-2243. S2CID 5212833.
  8. ↑ "Pantech to close smartphone business". Yonhap News Agency. 12 May 2017. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  9. ↑ "LG to pull out of mobile phone market". The Guardian. 2021-04-05. Retrieved 22 August 2023.
  10. ↑ Three Korean mobile phone service providers (in Japanese, 2004)
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