“Capture the Mobile Message Market” - Keen Competition in Korea, USA, Japan and Europe

Mobile message service boom is sweeping over the world. The mobile message service for SMS, picture or image has been highlighted as the popular mobile service like voice call. The mobile phone has been changed to the equipment for the advanced data communication from the means for voice call.

According to communication companies on July 7, the mobile communication companies of the world such as Korea, USA, Japan, Europe and China have strengthened the recent market capture because the mobile message service will be the new profit source to increase the data communication demand.

Domestic companies including SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom have commercialized the CDMA service of the three generations, and then have launched the advanced MMS, which can use the internet message as well as the picture and image transmission. They appeared as the leader of this market.

Mobile communication companies of Europe have been finding out an alternative from the next generation message service as a profitability is getting worse due to a saturation of the voice calling market. Mobile supply rate of Europe increased to 73.6% as of the end of the last year. So, the related companies have concentrated on the new demand creation of data division. Nokia has launched the terminal which can transmit the message including the color picture through color screen and digital camera. Vodafone, the largest mobile company of Europe started the multimedia message service in Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal and Spain.

In USA, many companies have used the mobile message service for the customer service such as a notice of insurance maturity and flight schedule service. So, the service of adult subscribers sharply increased.

Insure Directline which is the insurance company of USA, started the service which informs of the insurance maturity through sending the message with the mobile of the customers. Verizon Wireless increased two terminals of the wireless data function to 10 typed terminals in the beginning of the year.

In China, the mobile message market has been extended due to an introduction of CDMA mobile phone. China Mobile and China UNICOM have started the short message interconnection service in May.

In Japan, as NTT DoCoMo and J-PHONE have commercialized the multimedia message service, and so these companies have become the strong competitors of Korea in the technology standard and exports competition.

Park Jong-Bong, the director of Atlasresearchgroup said “When the mobile message market has expanded, the terminal demand has naturally increased. The prospect of the foreign advance are encouraging for Korean service companies or terminal companies which have the competitiveness in the field of the mobile phone”.

Tae-Han Kim freewill@donga.com