Telecom Asia: Regarding SK Telecom's commitment to what it refers to as "Blue Ocean" strategies - how is this being developed and what specific goals does SK Telecom have in this regard?
Lee Myung Sung: SK Telecom was one of the earliest players to introduce music and financial payment services and LBS. However, while these services have not achieved the target financial accomplishments that we had targeted, we strongly believe that this is an industry that it is very promising with much more potential.
What our CEO refers to as "Blue Ocean" strategy is not only the convergence theme that we have always pursued but other areas as well. We believe that telecommunications, especially mobile, can contribute to enhance the productivity of other industries as well. SKT believe that by applying and utilizing its ICT infrastructure in Korea we can enhance the productivity of businesses in various sectors.
Our new focus is not only to use our mobile industry infrastructure but also to seek areas that can enhanced the productivity of the businesses of a wide variety of areas and to use it actively, when we go global.
How exactly does SK Telecom leverage its ICT to drive further developments, and within SKT what characteristics are required to continually drive the ability to innovate?
What really drives us is firstly to maintain our leadership in our core business which is the mobile business. On top of that we must fully understand our customer base as they demand different resources and capabilities. And that includes culture and organization changes, we have not yet decided how we are going to change but we are looking in a new direction and we are looking at what we need to best cater to our customers. The first step is to redefine our customers and then look at the needs of each customer group.
In terms of our technology we obviously leverage our world-class network and infrastructure to deliver a new breed of service plus look to technology to better capture customer information.
So can you indicate what these changes or new directions might be?
We're just starting on this change process - it's a very big change and you must understand that we are a large organization so things will take some time to change. We have decided the general direction for this change to follow and it will take us into new areas - very likely beyond the mobile space, but I can't disclose what they are now.
A lot of people talk about the consumerization of technology. Now how do you harness that trend and how do you make use of the potential knowledge that you can get from consumers?
We already have a very advanced infrastructure and platform in place. Therefore, when we develop new services we can just simply use our existing platform and complete the developing process in a very rapid way.
In terms of meeting consumer needs and reaching out to them we have many measures in place to do this, via the web, and other channels which all increase our interaction with consumers. We are keen to use consumer interests and insight to incorporate into our product development process.
I think we're a very consumer-oriented company and to have succeeded in this industry for this many years we have definitely had to be effective in listening to customers and have them participate in the operations and development of the products.
If you look ahead to the next two three years within your industry, what do you predict to be the best game changing shift? Is it going to be at device or operating system level?
I honestly think in the immediate future, concepts like Facebook - we call this direct e-commerce - will have huge influence on consumers especially in the way we consume media and content. Facebook users produce and consume the way they want so that e-companies like Verizon may have less impact and less influence on the direction of services they must provide - increasingly it is the consumer that will decide and have most impact on profits.