Who Will Be the Frontrunner?
With the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) beginning to be unleashed, Korea's three mobile carriers, which have tried to create non-telecommunication services, are fiercely competing to take the number one spot in the IoT sectors, including connected cars, remote meter reading, and wearable appliances. The competition to be the first ranker in the IoT market is expected to further intensify with the commercialization of 5G services in March of next year.
According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on September 6, the number of domestic IoT connections reached 7.72 million as of July. In January of this year, the figure was only 6.72 million. This means that 1.67 million were added in just half a year.
Mobile carriers have been making massive investment in the IoT and KT is the most prominent company in terms of investment in the IoT. KT which lagged behind SK Telecom (2.17 million lines) with a total of 2.02 million lines in July of last year, rose to first place in January of this year. In July of this year, KT's IoT lines numbered 2.66 million, surpassing those of SK Telecom (2.49 million lines).
KT particularly stood out with its market share of about 41% (660,000 units) in the vehicle control sector. KT announced that it would take off as a professional car software company last year and declared that it would post 500 billion won in sales in the connected car business by 2022. "Our connected car business division expanded its business base through the Giga Drive Service. We have secured 650,000 subscribers by actively collaborating with manufacturers," a KT official said in a conference call for the second quarter of this year.
On top of that, KT is maintaining its number one position in the tablet PC (470,000 lines) and wearable device sectors such as smart watches (660,000 lines), beating SK Telecom.
In the meantime, in the remote control sector which is the largest business sector in the IoT, SK Telecom has been steadily raking first. Remote control covers remote gas, water, manhole meter reading, environmental monitoring, and smart farms among others. SK Telecom accounted for 37% (1.1 million lines) based on the LoRa network, which is an IoT-only network. In particular, SK Telecom beat second-ranked KT (620,000 lines) by about 500,000 lines.