SEOUL, KOREA — The introduction of smartphones brought a tremendous change in the IT industry. As such, a new term "mobile IT," came to be. The emergence of such a word means that an organization has to be different from the one that existed in the world of wired communication system. This means, unlike enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, in which only the "professionals" participate, that a new type of management or mediating organization, with participants equipped with smartphones and tablet PCs, are in demand. It also indicates that the power of “mobile industry” is on the verge of taking off. In order to keep in pace with the changes, the Korean government is supporting the "overseas expansion of Korean mobile industry that combines Hardware(HW) and Software(SW)" through Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (Kotra). In order to fulfill such a important mission, Kotra recently launched the ICT business Department on February 1.
Jo Eun-ho, Director General of ICT business Department at Kotra, said, "IT business department was divided by two organizations as IT integration team and SW system industry team which have supported HW and SW industries, respectively, but there was a limitation in deriving a close cooperation between the two. That is why we have launched the ICT business Department to incorporate HW and SW."
"From now on, we will continue to support the outstanding businesses and work on discovering new ones. Thus, I gave the ICT business department a nickname of 'ambidexter’ organization," added Mr. Jo.
In order to support its operation, Kotra has allocated around 100 employees, including personnels dispatched to 80 Korea Business Center in some 115 countries around the world, to pursue Korean IT business marketing.
"Our core specialty is ''mobile IT' and we will work on introducing Korean mobile IT technology for common use in the global market," emphasized Mr. Jo.
Project Based Marketing 2012
Mr. Jo his organization ambidexter because 70% of ICT business department operation is to support businesses already proven their success while 30% is to search new start-ups. “In order to secure Kotra’s position as IT export promoter, we must find the new businesses while supporting the existing ones,” he added. Already having won various projects in 2011, Kotra aims to promote total marketing to keep up with its impressive track record, and continue to gain recognition from the Korean government for consistency in successful works already carried out.
In fact, Kotra has helped LG CNS and six small- and medium-sized enterprises win an USD 300million ITS project in Bogota, Columbia in 2011. Moreover, DMBro received a USD 130 million order in the Dominican Republic for “T-DMB” system with Kotra’s assistance, which is the largest amount of overseas order for digital multimedia broadcasting project. Kotra plans to support IT projects in e-Goverment, intelligent traffic system (ITS), e-health care, security solution and education informatization this year. Thus, Kotra will host meetings or pay a visit to the high-level government officials, who are in ministerial or vice ministerial levels, for the countries that plan to place major project orders or IT industry venture capitals. For example, the head of Botswana Telecommunications Authority visited Korea in last January for Korean ICT benchmarking. Kotra is also sponsoring e-Smart World 2012, which kicked off in Manila on January 18-19, and to showcase in Mexico City, Mexico (June 18-19).
To Introduce Promising IT Biz for Global Stardom
Mr. Jo emphasized, “Our core business is linking the HW industries and the SW industries both focused on mobile IT and promoting them globally.” Recent IT industry is experiencing an evolution in mobile industry due to the wide use of smartphones and the “mobile IT” has become highly marketable.
For instance, global mobile market reached USD 1.14 trillion in 2010 and is expected to expand to USD 1.36 trillion by 2016. So, it’s very important that helping Korean firms’ overseas expansion and making them one of the best-quality companies in the world..
First of all, the Korean government will focus on supporting in domestic businesses that possess competitive edges in device, such as smartphone components, DMB equipments, and contents such as apps’ cloud computing and solutions. The government also selected wireless network system, mobile SW and contents, and mobile service as three major promising mobile businesses.
Kotra will hunt for “global star companies” out of 1,430 domestic mobile businesses and introduce them to the global market. Currently, Korea has selected 10 businesses targeting the U.S. market and another 10 businesses targeting Japan and promoting them through Korea IT Support Centers in Silicon Valley U.S, Tokyo and Beijing. The selected companies include Crucialtec Co., which dominates 95% of global mobile input market, AMOTECH which is number one in mobile chip, and Rsupport, which holds 71% of Japan’s remote support software market. Kotra plans to select mobile businesses in 2012 and place them on the global stage through “Global Mobile Vision 2012(GMV 2012: 2012. Nov. 7~8)” exhibition, and support them in marketing and Connectes&Developement.
Start up Battle Korea 2012
Kotra will also sponsor “Start up Battle Korea 2012” contest, which will help IT start-ups to gain export opportunities, get investment from overseas and receive mentoring from global status companies. This event is for promising the domestic IT start-up companies that possess the specialties in apps, solutions and products with global competitiveness. Kotra plans to invite panels from Facebook, Twitter, Google and venture capitals for the contest, which will also help Korean businesses get direct exposure to the overseas market. Especially, Inamori Kazuo, honorary chairman of Kyocera and chairman of JAL is invited as panel for the event. Companies can submit an application during in March and April, and they will be shortlisted to 30 companies after document screening in May. The main competition will be held in June 12-13. The finalist will get special support from the second half of this year for overseas operations.
Ground for Biggest IT Market - China
Korean businesses are targeting China as the main market of pursuit. “China is global’s number one IT producer and number two IT consumer, and its market has grown by about 13% each year to read USD 280 billion this year,” said Mr. Jo. That is because cities in China are developing fast resulting the related IT products are growing up. Intelligent Traffic System is very much in demand in the China, and orders of USD 1.48 billion were given out in 2011. Also last year, China awarded USD 2.84 billion of orders in e-health care business. For 2012, China is expected to place USD 8.3 billion in orders for urban Smart city development, which Korea should aim for with the pride of having been selected as number one in UN e-Government Survey.
Although, the Chinese market has a great possibilities, Korea’s SW businesses were reluctant to hop into the market because of problems in the intellectual property right protection such as computer games and apps. This was why Kotra did not select Chinese general consumer market but select Chinese telecommunications market as the main target. Rsupport, the company mentioned earlier in this article and exports its product to Japan’s NTT Docomo starting March 1, is the first case of a Korean communications solution to be exported to foreign buyers. With such a outstanding performance, Kotra will take it as a steppingstone for Korean firm’s debut on the China mobile communications market, which will be in providing solutions to the telecommunication companies. Finding local partners from the initial stage will be an important task for Kotra. To find such partnership, Kotra will invite global buyers from major cities in China and Taiwan for “IT Global Star 100”. The event will be held several times in the second and third quarter of this year. Haier, ZTE, Huawei, China Mobile, Lenovo, Digital China, and Dell China, the seven major communications releated companies in China, will be invited to participate in the event on four different occasions.
