Smart Content
A recent report shows that the domestic smart contents market swelled to a size of 1.95 trillion won in 2012, an 18.2% rise from a year ago. Experts estimate the market will keep growing at an annual average rate of 22% thanks to the rapid popularization of smart devices such as smartphone, tablet PC and smart TV. They predict the market will reach 3.54 trillion won in 2015. “Smart contents” are designed to take advantage of the capabilities of smart devices, such as interactive touches or networks and GPS sensors.
According to the report on the 2012 Smart Contents Market Research released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (MCST) and Korea Creative Contents Agency (KOCCA) on March 7, game contents accounted for nearly half of the entire smart contents market with 905.4 billion won in sales (46.4%). Other genres than games showed a plus or minus 5% portion each; e-book (7.7%), music (4.7%), videos (4.4%), and edutainment (5.2%). The total cultural contents including games, music, videos and edutainment contributed to 78.9% of the smart contents market.
The most widely-used device for smart contents was smartphone (76.1%), followed by tablet PC (17.6%) and smart TV (6.3%). As tablet PC has showed a sharp growth in particular, the future looks bright for e-book and edutainment contents.
“Last year, smartphone games such as Anipang gained great popularity and led the growth of the game genre. The smart contents market is among the creative industries where the barriers for entry are low enough to make it possible with small seed money and good ideas. So we need policy support for entrepreneurship and diversification of revenue models,” said the MCST.