Fierce competition in one of the most technologically advanced market with the highest smartphone penetration, is forcing telecom operators to resort to “smarter options” to sell. For telecom operators this is a matter of survival in a highly competitive market. But, these “options” may not always be within the legal framework of the Government, and result in undesirable consequences. This is exactly what happened in Korea, where telecom operators are fighting to…
The much awaited global launch of Samsung Galaxy S5 missed its launch date. The launch planned on 11th April, was not delayed, but started selling 2 weeks ahead of schedule. This was pulled off by Samsung’s telecom and distribution partners in Korea – SK Telecom and KT. SK Telecom was the first to start selling the device on Thursday 27th March. Later, KT also decided to start selling, as it did not…
Public transportation systems are still clumsy to use. If you are in the stone ages of technology, you are standing in queue to buy your ticket. Then joining another queue to get your ticket verified and enter the station. And not to forget, you are asked to tender exact change at the ticket counter; another hassle. If you are in the more developed world, you need to carry a card that helps…
WIV Labs, a data & social analytics startup which received almost $1M early stage investment from K-Cube Ventures and SMBA (Korean Government), today announced the beta launch of its social Q&A service Qaster (qaster.com). Qaster is the first and only service to archive questions and answers from the 500 million messages generated on Twitter daily. The company aggregates this data and allows users to search through its website. Qaster makes useful Q&As…
Groupon recently announced liquidation of all assets of Groupon Korea, and a plan to focus all its efforts to promote its recent acquisition Ticket Monster (TMON) in Asia’s third largest e-commerce market. Groupon now joins the long list of global companies, which have failed to capture market share in South Korea. Recently (December 2012), Yahoo also shut down its Korean operations, as profitability became an issue in South Korea. South Korea is…