Name: Chang-Hyun Ryu (changhyr)
Smartphones hit Seoul, Korea
Smartphones became an essential device for many people in Korea. Walking around the street and working in office, the smartphones are being used everywhere and provide enormous advantages to users. The smartphones were not popular in Korea until Apple’s iPhone or Samsung’s Galaxy S came out because there were not many smartphone devices available and there were not many incentives to use the smartphones. However, after several innovative smartphones hit Korea, mobile phone market in Korea was dominated by the smartphones. The smartphone users are estimated 500,000 in 2009, 4,000,000 in 2010 and 10,000,000 by 2011. It means that every one person out of five uses the smartphones in Korea by 2011. Samsung and LG Electronics constantly provide new smartphones in the market, and application developers also endlessly develop new applications to make the smartphones more useful.
Applications for distinctive characteristics of Korean culture
Although there are tons of smartphone applications developed in worldwide, there are some unique web-based smartphone applications that almost all smartphone users in Korea make a use of. These unique applications are perhaps only available or popular for Korean smartphone users because of distinctive characteristics of Korean culture or the way of living lives in a particular Korean environment. To explain a little about Korean culture, Korea is widely known as “bbalibbali” (hurry-hurry) culture. People from Korea walk fast, drive fast, eat fast and almost every processes are done in very fast manner. If a car in front of you drive really slow even though it is following traffic rules, the car behind will blow vehicle horn to give notice of “drive faster” to the driver in front of. These characteristics of Korean culture prove to have some unique and useful smartphone web applications.
"Bus and Subway"
One of the mobile web-based applications which are very necessary to Korean is a “Bus and subway” application. This application controls all public transportation in Seoul and it gives the smartphone users an opportunity to save time greatly. This application contains every single buses’ and subways’ information that is currently running in service. Not only this application gives detailed information about bus and subway routes, the greatest function about this application is that it notifies users with information about whereabouts the certain bus or subway is at current time and its estimated time of arrival at the each stops. The traffic is always a disaster in Seoul and this mobile application gives an idea of when to come out to bus or subway stop to avoid waiting time.
"Banking"
The second useful application that most Korean uses is a browser-based smartphone banking application because Koreans do not want to visit and wait in lines in banks. The mobile banking applications are widely available in many countries; however, the users of smartphone banking dramatically increased as most of banks and investment firms offer mobile banking systems in Korea. [There are two types of mobile banking, one of which is browser-based and the other is WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for interoperability) based applications. A study shows that browser-based mobile banking is more widely used in Korea.] People do not have to visit banks to view their balances, transfer funds or to do any other transactions. They are also easily able to make sells and purchases funds and stocks. Because of smartphones conveniently comparable with mobile banking, a lot of people in Korea use the mobile banking with their smartphones not only in transportations but also at home.
"Discount incentives"
Smartphones are much widely used by younger generations in Korea including students and age ranged from 20s~35s because of high functionalities. Since students and working people tend to eat outside a lot, there is a very useful web and location based application for them. This application verifies your location and introduces restaurants and other quick eating places with usable coupons for those specific restaurants. For example, if you are walking on 4500 Forbes Avenue, the application will provide you restaurants near you with their locations, menus with prices and coupons that can be used in the restaurant. This application is very useful because it can save time to look for restaurants near you, and also the users can choose to go to restaurants which offer coupons. Another similar application exists in Korea relating to credit card usage. In Korea, many franchise restaurants, amusement parks, hair salons and department stores give discount incentives by using certain credit cards when making purchases. The deals are made by credit card companies and those stores. But it is tough to know which of these stores are eligible for discounts with which credit cards. Therefore, this web-based application provides a list of all credit cards existing in Korea with eligible stores’ and discount information. For example, if I choose to view “Amex purple credit card” it will show a list of stores where I can use this credit card and get discounts.
"Chauffeur Service"
The Korean drinking culture is well known as Korea has the highest per capital alcohol consumption in the world. And because of the drinking culture, the government has launched a campaign to encourage safe and responsible drinking due to the increase in alcohol related deaths. It is against the law to drive after drinking; however, people just ignore the warning and keep driving although they are drunk. In Korea, there is a popular part-time job called “Daeree Unjeon” (chauffeur service), in which chauffeur drive a car instead of intoxicated person to desired destinations. The current procedure to get a chauffeur is to call “Daeree Unjeon” company to ask for a driver who is located nearest from intoxicated person. This gets very annoyed during the busy time at night and it is too time consuming to wait for an operator to speak with to ask for a driver. The web-based smartphone application was invented to avoid calling and waiting time. The intoxicated person, who needs a chauffeur to drive his car, can simply use the application to input current location and it will find a chauffeur who is located nearest to requester. Then the chauffeur nearest is notified of requester’s information and assigned to provide a chauffeur service for the requester. This new application is widely used in Korea now because of its quick and free way to ask for a chauffeur service.
"Amusement Park Tour Guide"
Have you ever had an experience when you visited an amusement park and waited for a roller coaster ride for more than 2 hours? The biggest amusement park operated by Samsung called “Everland” offers a smartphone web-based application called “Everland Guide”. This application provides “ride and show time information”, “map service”, “waiting time”, “recommendation activities” and “my page”. Particularly, “waiting time for a ride” which is a real-time service gives visitors to effectively enjoy the huge amusement park without wasting time for waiting in lines. This application also provides navigation service within the park, so the visitors can easily find restaurants, bathrooms or rides with estimated distances and times to get there from current location. Also to avoid of getting lost in a huge parking lot, users can save their parked location in smartphones and it will give directions to the location when looking for a car.
"For travelers"
Often, non-Korean speaking people visit Korea and discover that sometimes they have hard time when traveling around Seoul. The old way of guiding a city tour is to hand out translated pamphlets. The city of Seoul now provides a web-based smartphone application called “i Tour Seoul” in Korean, English, Japanese, Mandarin and Cantonese. This application was introduced in April 2010, and it became very popular among travelers. The application includes information about tourist attractions, famous restaurants, accommodations and cultural events. The travelers may choose each one of these locations or multiple locations, and the application will give what routes to go and what transportations to take. If travelers want to watch shows or participate in activities in Korea, they can easily access to the web application via smartphones to reserve seats by themselves. It is ok not to have smart phones because Seoul will rent out smartphones to foreigners.
"Check your health"
Last but not least, the health information application becomes popular in Korea recently. This application is provided by National Health Service of Korea. With this application, a user can choose from a list of symptoms and by submitting, the application will give the user with possible diseases. For example, if you have a stomachache and perhaps a headache at the same time and submit to the application, the system gives results such as appendicitis. The results might not be a correct disease; however, it can give a better idea for users to suspect possible diseases and encourage them to visit hospitals. This is not yet most popular smartphone application yet; however, it will become a very essential application as more and more health issues being analyzed digitally.
The smartphone’s web-based application markets are developing so fast. As Korea is one of the strongest technology based country, there are many smartphone applications developed every day. Many of Korean application developers may develop games and other useful applications to serve worldwide smartphone users, but they also develop applications to satisfy people with distinctive characteristics of Korean culture. One day, I hope some of these useful applications serve all around the world for smartphone users.
REFERENCES
1. http://cafe.naver.com/cafecosea.cafe?iframe_url=/ArticleRead.nhn%3Farticleid=6669
2.http://cafe.naver.com/dnswjs.cafe?iframe_url=/ArticleRead.nhn%3Farticleid=559
3.http://blog.naver.com/youngsamsung?Redirect=Log&logNo=150096169378
4.http://cafe.naver.com/apbcenter.cafe?iframe_url=/ArticleRead.nhn%3Farticleid=637
No comments:
Post a Comment