Korea's Cell-Phone Exports Jump 55%
South Korea’s IT exports topped $6.19 billion in July, up 30.8 percent from a year ago, despite external environmental factors such as high crude oil prices and hikes in U.S. interest rates. Exports of cellular phones rose to $1.95 billion last month, up 55.3 percent from a year ago, with exports of digital televisions increasing 12.8 percent to $130 million, thanks to a growing demand in the U.S. market coinciding with the 2004 Athens Summer Olympics.
With imports of IT products amounting to $3.41 billion, the nation’s IT industry achieved a surplus of $2.78 billion in July, slightly down from $2.97 billion recorded a month ago, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) said Thursday.
The MIC forecasts that South Korea’s IT exports will post a steady growth for the rest of the year as major economies, particularly the U.S. and Japan, are expected to rebound strongly in the second half, demanding more high-priced IT products. Continue >>
We just noticed this story KT had posted on July 30th and thought that might be of interest to you as well.
Home-Grown Mobile Internet Platform to Be Mandated Next Year
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/tech/200407/kt2004073018252012350.htm
South Korean mobile handset manufacturers will be required to use a homegrown wireless Internet platform for every cell phone shipped locally as of April 2005. The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) said Friday it revised regulations to mandate the wireless Internet platform for interoperability (WIPI) from early next year.
Before the agreement, the U.S. continued to oppose Korea’s plan to fix the WIPI as a unified national standard fearing that the binary runtime environment for wireless (BREW) of U.S.-based Qualcomm would lose ground here. The WIPI and BREW are both middle wares, which enable people to download and run programs for playing games and sending and sharing messages on the move through handheld terminals.