|
Article addresses the growth of the tech industry in Korea
The Hoffman Agency’s Brian Bae recently penned a piece in the magazine
Korea IT News. An English translation of the article is provided below.
IT in Korea: Let’s Find Our Own “Unique Secret”
By Brian Bae, The Hoffman Agency
More than a decade has passed since I started to help IT companies (domestic and foreign alike) make stellar debuts in the Korea market. During this period, I have been sometimes astonished by the advanced business practices of foreign companies, and more often than not, deeply impressed by the jaw-dropping developments of Korea’s IT industry, which I have witnessed firsthand as a market participant. Given its infantile state when I first started in PR, I’d say that the nation’s IT industry has “evolved,” rather than “developed.”
Replacing “Moore’s Law” with “Hwang’s Law,” Samsung Electronics has been doubling the storage capacity of its semiconductor chips every year, not every 18 months as the former predicted, for eight years in a row.
The growth of the Internet-related industries has been even more splendid. Korea has honorably transformed itself into the world’s most wired nation, with a 65 percent Internet penetration rate last year, 13 years after commercial Internet service was first launched in 1994 and nine years after Thrunet, a Korean ISP, first introduced Internet networking service to the nation in 1998.
This development of information technology has made it possible for Korea’s IT industry to grow beyond a simple pilot market into a market for coexistence. In the past, Korean IT companies played just the simple roles of buying and consuming imported IT products. But nowadays, homegrown IT flagship companies are forming fleets with foreign partners to penetrate into overseas markets.
Joining forces with TeleAtlas, a world-class company specializing in digital map data, one of Korea’s leading navigation system manufacturers is successfully establishing a beachhead in Europe. Irdeto, a globally recognized company in the field of media content security, is helping domestic set-top box manufacturers to enter into international markets through its global network.
A wireless broadband Internet technology developed by the Korean telecom industry called WiBro has been selected as an international standard at a recent World Radiocommunication Conference. Moreover, the world’s famous IT and media companies like Google, Comcast, SprintNextel, Intel and Time Warner Cable are positively considering adopting WiBro in the United States as the wireless Internet networking standard for the nation’s biggest infrastructure to link up computers, TV sets, mobile gadgets and other IT devices on the same basis.
As if all this stunning news was not enough, I’ve heard more news stating that Korean technologies and standards are competing with global companies in various IT fields across the world market.
I think superior technologies and services are produced from the culture of feeling and using abundant technologies and services. Within a short time, Korea has produced fuel for the next generation, with a large number of early adopters and the equivalent passion of ordinary people. Now, it’s the time to show our own “unique secret” to make it appealing to the world market.
Getting out from under the feelings of ambiguous fear and inferiority in the world market, being flexible to global business standards, selecting exact and detailed target markets, and setting publicity strategies for your company and products, along with a local business launch, are all needed for Korean IT companies to succeed today. Actually, we have witnessed numerous cases in which domestic IT companies, including several ventures with superior competitive technology, have failed, as they tried to adopt domestic marketing practices in the global market.
As more and more overseas companies find Korea to be an ideal test bed for their newly developed technologies – mostly in the fields of mobile telecommunications, high-speed Internet, Web applications and computer games – the number of cases in which the technologies of domestic IT companies are highly recognized across the international scene is increasing as well.
All in all, as an industry participant, I hope to see Korean companies in harmony with their overseas partners turn over a new leaf in IT history and spread what’s called the “Korean Wave” across the world.
|
