“The Korean Mobile Phone Handsets Industry, Good at Design, Bad at Marketing.”

It is known that the marketing ability and technology leading ability of our mobile communication terminal industry in the world market is inferior. Therefore, some worries are brought up that the Korean terminal makers might be sunken to simple assembly lines of the leading companies like Motorola and Ericson.

According to the LG Economy Research Institute on the 13th, the Korean mobile communication industry could compare with top class companies in the world in terms of product leadership with innovative design abilities, timely coping ability in market, and excellent planning technology.

However, although it might be different company by company, it is predicted that the companies might be in difficult situation if they don`t do something about △inferior of distribution system, △lack of leading research ability, △lack of original technology, and △burden of royalty in the global marketing ability and technology leading ability. The expense competitive power, which is summarized to reducing the initial cost and fast mass production, will be weakened also if the technology standard (platform) is changed by the leading companies or the market is radically changed.

In relation to this, a researcher of the LG Economy Research Institute, Cho, Joon-Il stressed, “We need to use the strategy to select companies according to their competitive power and saturate the resources on them.” The researcher Cho especially said, “The leading companies like Motorola and Ericson are providing their exclusive technologies to other companies by opening their platforms recently,” and explained, “There is even a prediction that value added from merging hardware and software in Korean industry and system design might be concentrated to the standard platform development companies.” Therefore, he insisted that the Korean companies must actively participate in the next generation technology standard by securing strong partners or merger and annexation.

Keuk-In Bae bae2150@donga.com