Korea's strategies for mobile technology standards in smart ecosystem

Prior to the introduction of smartphones, South Korea's mobile market had already recognised the early construction of 3.5G technology HSDPA, WiBro, commercial networks, and advanced networks as an important strategy to gain competitive advantage over the market. With the emergence of a smart ecosystem, however, the competition over 4G technical standards is considered to be vital for securing the mobile operating systems and collaborations with participants within the ecosystem, such as the alliances between the devices and content providers. Thus, departing from the viewpoint that a mobile carrier-led network is required to make constant investments and improvements to help create a competitive advantage over the market. Hence, this study targets South Korea's mobile market, to analyse the different 4G mobile standard technologies that were simultaneously commercialised for the first time in the world, to examine the mobile carriers' strategies to dominate the 4G technical standards with the introduction of smartphones, and to provide implications derived from the study.