Where 3G is going today

With the advent of 3G in the Asia Pacific market, many analysts, journalists and industry players have been looking for direction from countries that have matured 3G services such as Japan and Korea for such “killer apps” that will spur mass 3G subscription uptake. While typical 3G services such as Music, VOD, and Games are expanded gradually, there has been recent talk that rather than one or two such applications on a worldwide or regional scale, there may be different killer apps for markets on a much smaller geographic scale – like countries, or even individual cities.

Sang-Jin Park Regional CEO and President Samsung Asia

3G at work

In the financial hubs of Singapore and Hong Kong, where a significant proportion of the population is involved in stock trading, 3G is a welcome technology that will provide instant real-time counter movements via its broadband. In Korea, where the world’s first 3G service was launched, all 3 service providers offer stock trading services which have seen tremendous uptake. Not surprising considering that prior to the launch of this service, about a third of all Korean retail stock transactions were executed online. Another service is traffic monitoring services for Asia Pacific cities that are notorious for massive traffic jams which have cultivated a demand for real-time traffic information. Motorists in cities like Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur stand to benefit from such a service that provides real-time notifications of traffic jams that can be shown in detailed maps, thanks to 3G’s bandwidth.

Entertainment content delivery via 3G service was the one of the first applications to be widely-adopted by the Japanese and Korean, and is now big business in those countries. With video on demand services, no longer do subscribers need to remain at home or depend on their video recorders to catch their favorite shows as they can now be delivered on demand, again thank to 3G bandwidth. Even interactive gaming with 3G breaks the Bluetooth range barrier, enabling massively multiplayer online games to be played among subscribers against each other around the globe, anywhere, anytime! Indeed, with 3G, if developers can dream up relevant services and applications, 3G will provide them the bandwidth to deliver them.

Fueling growth: A Success Formula

But what good are 3G applications if they are let down by the features and quality of handsets that are made available to subscribers? Can you imagine having insufficient features or display resolution on your handset when sifting through thousands of lines of counters when searching for a particular stock in the stock-monitoring example above? Or being unable to discern scenes and faces in your video on demand shows?

Indeed, the services that will be delivered by 3G will demand the most powerful and capable mobile handsets ever. Large, high resolution screens and powerful processors in such handsets will be the order of the day for any operator that wishes for its services to be enjoyed by its subscriber to the fullest.

Samsung’s First Mover Advantage

Where Samsung and 3G are concerned, for the first time in the world, the company provided Korean operators with CDMA based 3G total solutions including handset and network systems in October 2000. Samsung not only engineered the 3G handsets that the company is renowned for, but it also supplied the backend data core network equipment and base stations for its CDMA network. Samsung commands a relatively dominant position in the domestic 3G market in terms of systems as well as handsets. Today, Korea has close to34 million 3G subscribers including CDMA 2000 1x and CDMA2000 EV-DO technology making it a key market for new service and application testing and development. Samsung has obtained huge benefits from its advanced home market.

Another good example is Samsung’s successful provision of CDMA EV-DO phones to US carriers as well as WCDMA phones near future. Samsung started providing U.S. market’s first 3G wireless multimedia mobile phone, the SCH-a890, in February 2005. With the a890 consumers can access a variety of applications, including on demand video streaming for over 300 video clips from leading content providers that are updated daily. To complement the service, the a890's stunning 260,000-color display provides an excellent screen for viewing videos.

This tight integration between hardware manufacturer and service provider ensures that content designed for 3G is delivered smoothly and consumers by subscribers via high quality handsets that deliver the services as they are meant to be shown. The experience gained in such large projects is highly relevant to UMTS networks. In this regard, Samsung offers UMTS 3G markets innovative, compact and high quality UMTS-handsets. Examples include the SGH-Z500, which is the smallest 3G phone in the world, as well as the SGH-Z300 that has incredible audio quality supported by dual speakers and a specially designed power amplifier. With this display, wide screen videos can be played while the phone is held in a natural, upright position.

2010: Into the Future

Work is also progressing on the proposed IEEE 802.16e standard, which will define WiMAX mobility. Late last year, WiMAX heavyweight Intel agreed to let 802.16e be based on WiBro (Wireless Broadband), a technology developed in Korea by Samsung Electronics and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI). WiBro is only a beginning for WiMAX portability, but it's a good beginning. Samsung intends to commercially launch WiBro high-speed data access systems and handsets in Korea next year with sector data throughput speeds of up to 50 Mbps. Samsung will utilize the experience gained from the Korean WiBro deployment to drive ongoing development of WiMax equipment for the global market.  

By the end of the forecast period in 2009, IDC expects that 3G services would have penetrated more than 12% of total mobile subscribers in the region, with South Korea leading at 63%, followed by Hong Kong, Australia, Singapore then Taiwan. Though the future of 3G is promising, this growth will not be possible if 3G services are not rendered as they ought to be. The handset is such an important equation in the 3G success formula.

However, as an industry leader, Samsung must continually look towards the future of technology.  In conjunction with our future planning, Samsung holds annual ‘Global 4G Forums’ inviting academics, service providers, handset manufacturers and component makers from all around. 2005 marks the 3rd Annual 4G Forum which will be held in Jeju Island Korea to discuss in-depth technology trends and network migration to 4G.  According to Rethink Research, which specializes in wireless market analysis, Samsung’s technology development puts us in a position to deliver "real-world 4G before 2010."