Annyeonghaseyo – welcome to the Korean category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of Korea, business issues relating to Korea, the Korean people, Korean culture and the Korean language.
At the time of writing this category descriptor its been about 10 years since I have last been able to visit Korea. In that time the country has risen on the world stage.
There have been continual disputes with Japan and more recently continual bitter disputes with China. The Japanese disputes are related to history and territory. Korea had been occupied as part of the Imperial Japanese empire. Independence came with the end of the second world war.
The Chinese disputes are more complex. Chinese investors are buying up Korean property particularly in Seoul, Busan and Jeju island, while many Koreans can no longer get on the property ladder. Chinese tourists blitz Korean shops in a similar way to what they’ve previously done in Hong Kong.
Chinese nationalism has seen claims made on Korean cultural assets from the national dress to kimchi. Finally China has interfered in Korea’s efforts to defend itself from the threat in the north.
Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Samsung launched a new smartphone that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in wireless as well as Korea. If there is Korean subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.
Whilst the UK government flights with the major carriers including Vodafone over 4G whilst simultaneously wanting universal broadband for rural communities, Korea has a real-life working LTE eco-system.
So what’s it like?
The handsets come with a spare battery and desk charger as realistic battery life is somewhere south of an iPhone 4S.
The devices sport big screens and other features like a built-in mobile television receiver that allows you to watch the five main TV channels – so its hard to just blame the network.
Call quality was an issue, primarily because of the way the calls are handled, the Korean careers were using 3G networks to carry voice calls. This means that calls are affected by network handover issues and the complexity of the chip architectures needed to do this.
Network coverage is patchy, which is why the 4G networks have bolstered their offerings with wi-fi roaming. You can’t go into a coffee shop or a department store and not find a paid for wi-fi service.
The key thing for me was that there wasn’t a key application that demonstrated the real-world superiority of LTE over 3G services. And this means that its hard to drive sales beyond the early adopter community unless carriers use bundle-based price promotions and subsidised handsets. One thing that did strike me whilst on the road was that laptop users didn’t bother using 3-or-4G dongles at all – which is where I thought LTE would be able to demonstrate superiority. More wireless related content here.
I decided to write on my story onAndroid differentiation after careful consideration. On one hand I didn’t want the companies involved to suffer because one executive had a loud mouth. On the other hand it raised interesting questions about the state of the Android eco-system. So I decided at the time to thinly veil the identities of the different parties.
March 14: I was sat down in the main dining room of the JW Marriott in Seoul having breakfast and minding my own business when I found myself sitting the next table along from a rather loud discussion of a proposal that a US start-up (Flipboard) wanted to make to a major Korean Android handset (Samsung) and tablet manufacturer in a meeting scheduled that day for 2pm.
The crux of the pitch was around Android differentiation opportunities. The major Korean manufacturer (Samsung) has a need for something to provide a clear space. The start-up can help the Korean company sell more devices if they pay for the start-up to develop their software. The software currently is a prominent RSS and social network aggregation as magazine-type reader on iPhone and iPad. The startup wanted funds to develop it specifically for the Korean company’s Android devices.
Samsung should also spend a bit more to offer on a new phone or tablet – a three-month free subscription to a publication like The New York Times, Vanity Fair or People magazine – given the media connections that the start-up partnership development person had: they could broker the deal to make this happen. Would the glorified subscription model be
I also gathered that a similar pitch had already been made to a Taiwanese handset manufacturer (HTC); but not much progress had happened, though this may change as they had a good idea that the start-up was in discussions with Samsung. HTC were apparently keen to talk to Flipboard again.
Now ignoring the lack of common sense in having this discussion in a public place with colleagues when your voice carries across the room I was struck by two things regarding Android differentiation:
The economics of major applications on Android seem to require major financial incentives if this guy had flown half-way around the world to pitch this offer at the same time that SXSWi was on in Austin
Android device differentiation / hyper-competition is becoming an issue, if the head of marketing at a large corporate would spend time to do this meeting and seriously consider the start-up’s proposal. The market must be seriously commoditised and there must be little ‘value-add’ benefits between devices
Now I don’t think that a free three-month subscription is going to move the needle that much, particularly if one looks at how Nokia’s Comes With Music initiative failed to arrest the decline of the world’s largest phone maker. And the implication about the economics of high-quality Android application development was something that concerned me, particularly when I look at the increasing demand for mobile work from clients. More related content here.
Social, search, mobile and TV is the first in a series of posts of observations and thoughts from my recent trip to Korea.
I was stuck by how mobile and TV advertising integration is achieved through QRcodes, search social and e-commerce. The consumer is surrounded in a brand membrane whilst at home in front of the TV.
Korea is known for being advanced in social networks and search engines. Twitter has a vibrant community there, but Me2Day gives it a good run for its money.
KakaoTalk is like a multi-platform version of BBM that brands are using to engage with fans and mature platforms like Cafe Daum, Naver and CyWorld can still school Silicon Valley on all things social.
The country also has a diverse and vibrant eco-system of television stations with a lot of content based around K-pop stars and celebrity participation. TV is available on mobile devices and is one of the main engines of popular culture. TV enjoys a viewership that you don’t see in the UK or Europe any more.
Given these two vibrant media eco-systems; advertisers and television commerce operations seek to do multichannel marketing. Here are some examples I took pictures of during a five-minute period during a mid-morning commercial break.
Daum Mobile search is suggested as Daum is known as a site that provides content of interest for women. Encouraging mobile use allows for an immediate call to action.
Han Hea Youn is a Korean fashion designer who sells her range of clothing via TV shopping channel. The QRcode at the top of the screen allows for the audience to get more information online and make a purchase.
Where the product isn’t specifically aimed at a female audience the commercials recommended a search term for Naver Mobile.
These commercial sections were not best-practice but indicated how true integrated multichannel has become a hygiene factor in Korean advertising campaigns. More related content here.
The Little White Box That Can Hack Your Network | Wired.com – the Pwnplug is a low-powered Linux computer loaded with hacking tool kits. The Pwnplug can crack wi-fi or power over ethernet connections in theory. It also illustrates the James Bond world that we live in, where the Pwnplug could look like anything, the only challenge being power. Bring your own technology poses additional challenges and would help conceal a Pwnplug. Also IT can’t dismantle or x-ray every every plug socket, phone charger, desk fan or extension lead in the building looking or a Pwnplug. Over time the components for a Pwnplug will get smaller and smaller
Sugar Cane 洗护包-牛仔裤洗护包心水推荐“洗濯屋 仕上屋” ‹ CatWhy 潮流追踪 – interesting move by Sugar Cane jeans – detergent to keep your denim in tip-top shape, coming in both premium care and vintage wash look options
Nissan May Revive Datsun – WSJ.com – brings back memories of the headmistress at my primary school who used to drive a Datsun Cherry 100a two-door in bright yellow (ironically this had sportier styling than the Coupé which looked more like a van from some angles)
One of the things that I had been thinking about for a while was the way the smartphone handset market; the Android eco-system had the value hollowed out of the business for the manufacturers including the Samsung brand. In some ways this process seemed to mirror what happened in the PC market through the 1990s and into the 2000s.
Home computing
But let’s go back to where it all began. Back at the end of the 1960s and into the early 1970s, home computing meant having a ‘dumb terminal’ connected to a mainframe or mini-computer at a large corporation or university via a telephone line. Due to the price of local calls in the US versus Europe; it was natural that should develop first in any meaningful way. Even then it was used by a very small number of early adopters. At this time Samsung was better known in Korea for fertiliser and started a partnership with Sanyo to learn about electronics.
However there was a latent demand for personal computing, you had a few geeky counterculture types who had an old mini-computer in a building and provided terminals and accounts to members of the public and community groups free of charge. Outside San Francisco however this latent demand wasn’t being met. The Homebrew Computer Club that held most of their meetings in an auditorium attached to the Stanford Linear Accelerator had a different idea.
In essence they looked to reinvent personal computing by using simpler less powerful hardware. This unleashed a wealth of innovation from the first spreadsheet to at-home stock-trading and eventually World of Warcraft.
Mobile devices are a similar point of reset in personal computing. Many of the tasks that we do from word processing to entertainment don’t necessarily need the amount of computing power that we have. Secondly even this Mac that I am writing the post on probably has lots of unnecessary code that isn’t really required by me. For people who don’t create a lot of content mobile devices from tablets to smartphones are ideal for their needs in many respects.
Beyond this moving forward through simplicity there is another aspect to the the rise of mobile devices that mirrors the PC world; like the Windows Intel eco-system before it – the Android ARM eco-system is becoming commoditised; defined by specification (processor, Android version and screen dimensions). This is what Nokia was afraid of when they decided not to go down the Android route; though the level of control that Microsoft has over Windows Phone hardware specification and and user experience could be argued make the lack of differentiation amongst Android competitors a mute point.
HTC looks as if they have been trying to do something about this, in terms of hardware: purchasing a majority stake in fashion audio brand Beats Electronics LLC and S3 Graphics. This was matched by a similar effort in software with their HTC Sense interface skin with some productivity and communications applications.
Technology marketers haven’t been doing themselves any favours with co-marketing budget type ads like these ones that I took a picture of last year for different Motorola phone models.
In reality, the HTC Sense interface isn’t the differentiator that one would have thought, they haven’t yet used the Beats audio brand in any meaningful way, nor has the S3 graphics come into the marketing mix. Sony Ericsson and Motorola have fared worse and Samsung has come out on top.
Why has Samsung been successful?
I think that this is down to a number of factors:
Samsung like Nokia has built up an extensive effective global logistics and channel network
An extension of this would be Samsung’s relationships with wireless carriers
Samsung can sweat the supply chain largely because it owns the supply chain: it makes LCD screens, memory, ARM procesors for instance. Thus allowing it to compete on price/performance points that many of the other players couldn’t match
In this respect, Samsung’s operational efficiency and effectiveness is similar to Dell in it’s prime (the main difference is that Dell wasn’t a vertically-integrated component manufacturer). Samsung’s head marketer Younghee Lee wants to turn Samsung into an emotional brand rather than a rational one. Historically consumers have known Samsung as making reasonably good products; but many didn’t even realise that the company is Korean rather than Japanese.
The company has a modicum of product design smarts that has allowed it to make in-roads in the television and brown goods markets at the expense of Panasonic and Sony – but it still isn’t operating at the same level of design acclaim as Apple.
Ms Lee’s aspiration for people to feel something about the Samsung brand is at odds with the adverts that the company has been running in the US.
(The embedded video is on Tudou, so will need patience whilst it loads).
The adverts generally follow a pattern:
Attacking iPhone customers as foolish zealots
Demonstrate a Samsung | Android feature
Finish on a rational message
It is the advertising equivalent of the Japanese phrase that ‘the nail that stands up must be hammered down‘. The problem for Samsung is that you don’t get a consumer to switch brands by berating or insulting them; those kind of motivators tend to only work as a line management technique in command-and-control companies (a la Apple).
Secondly, the rational reason doesn’t give a reason to switch from Motorola or HTC to Samsung with the disdain of iPhone customers as a common bond.
If Samsung wants to become a brand that consumers feel passion for, it won’t come through these attack adverts, but from the product design outwards in every part of the customer experience. In this respect Ms Lee’s hands are tied – as the product design and customer experience would need to be raised consistently across the Samsung product range; not just smartphones to make this happen effectively.
It takes years to get this right in an organisation of the scale of Samsung, whilst that is happening Samsung can consider how it can do more appropriate consumer marketing and advertising – I’d suggest by thinking about how to encourage and empower existing Samsung customers to become passionate advocates of the brand.
