Major Shift
SK Telecom, which announced a shift from a mobile service provider to a platform provider in April, is seeking radical reform quickly.
According to SK Telecom on Nov. 8, its three sectors of next-generation platforms – the life value platform, the Internet of Things (IoT) platform and media platform – are beginning to show results in earnest.
For the life value platform, the company is making various attempts to provide new value that customers have never experienced so far in their daily lives, based on new business models connecting content, community and commerce.
Smart home technologies are the product that leads innovation in the IoT platform. SK Telecom commercialized open smart home services in May, and has been releasing products one by one, in cooperation with diverse smart home device makers, for the first time in the mobile carrier industry. SK Telecom has launched 10 smart home products to date, and it plans to release 20 more products by the end of this year.
In addition, the company has opened ThingPlug, an Integrated IoT platform based on oneM2M standards, improving the efficiency of app development for developers and expanding the related ecosystem. It is also working together with Ericsson and Nokia, global device manufacturers, to offer IoT services over existing LTE networks, as well as specialized networks for the IoT.
In the media platform sector, the recent takeover of CJ Hellovision will give it wings. Once SK Broadband is merged with the nation’s largest cable TV operator CJ HelloVision, SK Telecom will become the service provider with 3.35 million Internet Protocol television (IPTV) subscribers and 4.2 million cable TV subscribers. Moreover, the smooth supply of media contents is expected with the cooperation of the CJ Group, one of the largest cultural content providers in Korea.