By Kim Tae-gyu

Korea is striving to develop mobile phones equipped with 3D holographic displays as a part of its strategy of preempting the lucrative information technology market.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) said Monday that holographic technology would be one of the centerpieces of its scheme of achieving a very advanced high-tech society by 2020.

“Currently, 3D solutions are mostly applied to TVs. But cellphones would employ 3D in a full-fledged manner through holographic technology,” MKE Deputy Minister Kim Jae-hong said.

Yet, he did not provide details on which company is developing the futuristic feature and when it would be available to the general public.

Korea has an edge in this area — Samsung Electronics and its cross-city rival LG Electronics are the world leaders in 3D TVs with the duo wrangling over technology standards.

As far as a 3D mobile phone is concerned, LG Electronics unveiled such a device in early 2011 for the first time in the world and the Optimus 3D enables users to have a multi-dimensional experience without wearing glasses.

However, its narrow viewing angle has been touted as a limitation and global corporations have proactively tried to move on to more advanced holograms.

When contacted, LG said that it is working on alternative 3D techniques but did not confirm whether holograms are on the list. Samsung refused to comment on devices under development.

Kim predicted that 3D holographic handsets are part of the up-and-coming communications revolution.

“Currently, communications are mostly about connecting people with people. With the advent of the super-connected era, however, things will be linked to human beings and even to other things,” Kim said.

“Nowadays, the number of wireless devices amount to around 10 billion. The figure is expected to explode to 7 trillion.”

The MKE is also looking to realize such futuristic applications as sports games based on virtual reality, which will be enabled by advanced augmented reality solutions under development.

On top of devices like holographic displays and services with virtual reality, the MKE said that platforms, networks and content are other significant areas that Korea will boost in the future to find new cash cows.

The ministry expects that such efforts will raise Korea’s global ranking.

“In exports of information technology items, we are currently fifth. In the next decade, we aim to jump two notches to third,” Kim said. “In the area of IT content, we will move up from today’s ninth to fifth over the same period of time.”