-- Meet The Minister --
By Yang Seung-taik
Information and Communication Minister
The mobile communications industry is thriving with more than 700 million people in
the world enjoying the benefits it brings to their everyday lives.
The information-technology (IT) industry is expected to further develop centering on
the mobile segments, including the wireless Internet, personal digital assistant (PDA)
and bluetooth.
As the Minister of Information and Communication of South Korea, I am more than
pleased to note that we have emerged as an IT power, most notably in the mobile
communications sector.
Such a strong presence in the world is often seen at global IT exhibitions where
South Korean companies' cutting-edge IT products draw attention from people
around the world.
The number of mobile communications subscribers in South Korea reached 27
million last year with export figures standing at $7.4 billion, accounting for 74
percent of the world's code division multiple access (CDMA) terminal market.
These are all profound achievements in such a short period of time.
We would have only dreamed of such remarkable achievements if it had not been
for our success in launching the commercial service of CDMA technology for the
first time in the world in 1996.
At that time, we only had mere 960,000 subscribers. It seemed difficult to secure a
domestic market with such a low figure and there were doubts whether we could
promote this industry on our own.
However, it turned out to be a matter of time before we were able to translate
vision into reality. Soon enough, South Korea became the first country in the world
to successfully launch the commercial service of CDMA technology, which was
being outpaced by GSM in terms of technical competence, and thus, emerged as the
world leader in this field armed with technical and strategic competitive edges.
With strong competitive edges, our export figures have exponentially soared from a
meager $870 million in 1997 to $1.78 billion in 1998, $5 billion in 1999 and $7.4 billion
in 2000.
By the end of this year, we expect to achieve our target export goal of $10 billion.
The launch of the commercial service in CDMA technology has paved the way for
our mobile communications industry to actively make inroads into the overseas
market.
At the beginning of this year, Samsung Electronics succeeded in winning a bid to
participate in China's CDMA project, which served as a great opportunity to
advance into the Chinese market of over $50 billion.
Since then, businesses on repeaters, handsets, wireless Internet, switching systems
and other mobile segments are trying to tap the largest mobile telecom market in the
world through investors presentations for CDMA in China's major cities.
At the same time, Korea is now expanding its mobile business to cover the newly
emerging markets such as Vietnam, Australia, Taiwan and India.
Our government has set a plan of creating a CDMA Belt throughout the world, and
will promote the mobile communications and semiconductor businesses as the two
major export industries.
With its export blueprint of Mobile Vision 2005 where it plans to export $15 billion
by 2002 and $35 billion by 2005, Korea hopes to become the leading country of the
world in mobile communications business.
In order to achieve this goal, the government plans to invest 150 billion won for
technology development, and at the same time, will make added efforts to open up
new markets through investors presentations.
To support all these activities and mobilize strength and cooperation between the
public and private sector, a Mobile Telecom Export Assistant Team was set up
within the government.
In particular, to strengthen cooperation with China in the mobile telecom sector, we
encourage the activities of the Mobile Expert Group Meeting and have established a
mobile telecom standard research institute and a cooperation center in Beijing to
promote industrial partnership with the world's largest mobile telecom market.
Both countries will also cooperate in developing key components and providing
technology standards.
From next year, South Korea will further strengthen its overseas marketing in
countries such as South East Asia, the Middle-East and Europe in order to expand
CDMA users worldwide, increase export for Korean-made global system for mobile
telecommunication (GSM) handsets and spread the wireless Internet technology.
I firmly believe that such an ongoing commitment and the strong enthusiasm of the
government, companies and people of Korea will lay the foundation to realize our
vision to emerge as the world's mobile superpower of the 21st century.
It is in that spirit that I wish those in the mobile communications sector the very best
in completing the remaining steps to translate what has long been our dream into
reality.
ÀԷ½ð£ 2001/10/25 18:54
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