Thursday, October 30, 2008

KoreaComm 2008-IPTV, Converged Services & More

SEOUL- Steve Murphy from AOL kicked off the event yesterday with a keynote speech where he highlighted the following based on his experience at AOL and of AOL customers:

-Mobile is about immediacy more than anything else...as people can get to their mails quicker on mobile than on a PC this explains the migration from PC to Mobile Web (personal note:hearing subsequent talks on future converged devices about to be launched that go for a widget based Web approach, immediacy could come to the traditional PC world soon)

-Mapquest is one the most downloaded AOL apps in the US

-About open models, the question is not so much whether this is important or not (everyone has it a priority)..the issue is whose version of 'open' will prevail

-Steve also made a point about niche plays on mobile which is convenient for me as I make a point on this in my presentation later today


Young Lyoul Lee from KT gave a remarkable presentation on IPTV in Korea (it is simply huge here, with KT planning to invest $1bn in this area over 5 years)...over 450,000 subscribers have signed up since launch in early 2008...the KTH network (a subsidiary of KT) now has over 35,000 videoclips available, the biggest collection of any operator in the world.

KT is now about to launch an IPTV-Shopping combo service this month, where you can watch actors in a videoclip and interact to find out what they are wearing and make a purchase online...

Young Min Kim from CELRUN gave a presentation on converged services, explaining how Telephone, Internet, Broadcast and Content are set to converge business models soon..interestingly I was reading the local paper today and they mentioned how the Korean government had just approved portability of household numbers so that users switching to IP telephony could retain their old number...

Young Min made a good point about the need for Service providers to merge to be able to increase the scope of their offerings..a trend we are starting to see already.