 KT Chairman Lee Suk-chae answers questions from reporters during a news conference on the company’s plans to establish an online content platform for Web-enabled televisions at the Imperial Palace Hotel in southern Seoul Tuesday. / Korea Times |
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
KT head Lee Suk-chae frequently talks about making his company more like Apple. Introducing an App Store-like online content platform for televisions could be a start.
KT, the country's biggest telephone company and Internet provider, announced plans to establish an "open" platform that delivers content and applications to its Internet protocol television (IPTV) customers.
"Our initiative for an 'open' IPTV service, which is based on the TV App Store and other service plans, will generate a whole new market for content developers and allow viewers access to a wealth of services that take advantage of digital convergence," Lee, chairman and chief executive of KT, said in a news conference at the Imperial Palace Hotel in southern Seoul.
KT claims that the online content marketplace, dubbed "TV App Store," will do for televisions what the iPhone did for smartphones.
With third-party developers allowed to produce and sell content over KT's television network, viewers are expected to be offered a wider variety of video and interactive data services on their Web-enabled television sets.
For example, students majoring in arts or child education could design a drawing application and list it on the TV App Store, which could be purchased by parents with children with a taste in art, KT said.
Or golf instructors could developing swing-analysis tools and sell them to weekend golfers.
Third-party developers will get 30 percent of the revenue generated through the TV App Store, which will be launched in the second-half of the year, KT said.
KT also said it plans to provide an open channel to allow "anyone" to broadcast over its IPTV platform after gaining approval from its content reviewing process, and allow similar freedom for video-on-demand (VOD) content, which may open new opportunities for small television studios or independent film makers.
To connect its IPTV platform with social media, KT is considering a variety of models to provide room for user-created content, social networking services and blogs.
Lee said that the plan to establish an applications market for IPTVs is part of the company's ambitions to create a single, large content value chain that covers televisions, computers, and fixed-line and mobile telephones.
KT, which is also the country's second-largest mobile telephony operator after SK Telecom, is generating a massive buzz in the smartphone market since releasing the Apple iPhone in November last year.
"In the age of smartphones, fixed-line and wireless Internet should be blended seamlessly, and IPTV becomes a part of this picture. Eventually, content developed for IPTV should also be made available for smartphones," Lee said.
"Unlike the thinking of the previous generation, IPTV is more computer than it is television. The content chain should be open, and it would be critical to create an ecosystem of telecommunications companies, media outlets, publishers, and smaller venture companies and developers."
IPTV, or the delivery of television services over broadband networks, provides viewers with a wealth of interactive features, including video-on-demand (VOD), e-commerce and other data services on top of conventional television programming.
KT is the biggest of the country's three IPTV operators, with the others being SK Broadband and LG Telecom, and hopes that establishing a stronger developer network for the television content will help it cement its IPTV leadership and create new revenue models.
The IPTV market has been growing slower than expected, with the three broadcasters managing to garner just over 2 million viewers, with KT having about half of them.
However, KT plans to increase the number of its IPTV viewers to 2 million by the end of the year.
Establishing a strong developer network appears critical for the IPTV operators to reduce their reliance on retransmitted national television and offer a larger variety of interactive, data-enabled content.
thkim@koreatimes.co.kr
