Web 2.0 Asia

Samsung Electronics introduced mobile Second Life and several other innovations at CTIA '08. Coverage here, and here.

With the Second Life client available on Samsung's mobile handsets, users can enjoy many services from the Second Life virtual world whenever and wherever. Unique features of the Second Life client on Samsung's mobile handsets include a mixed blogging platform that allows users to post their blog simultaneously in the real world and the virtual world of Second Life, and the Samsung Mixed Contact feature which allows users to have mixed world contact by communicating with avatar friends via voice or SMS. The Second Life client on Samsung's mobile handsets is compatible with Windows Mobile devices.

I like the concept of using mobile phone as a link between one's online (virtual) life and offline life - Imagine your real-world activities such as phone conversations or short messages being portrayed onto your virtual world.


What's also very interesting is Samsung Life Diary, Samsung's answer to Nokia Lifeblog. I had been involved with this project when I was at Samsung - honestly I didn't know it was going to take this long for Samsung to launch Life Diary.

LifeDiary, developed by Samsung, allows users to compose a personal diary, which manages the user's photos and videos taken that day, the calls made, SMS messages sent, contacts and any specific appointments throughout the day.

I'm sure Samsung Life Diary changed a lot since last time I was involved in the project (Fall '06), but some features we were planning at the time included visualizing social graph based on frequency of mobile phone communications, quick mobile blogging with rich content generated on mobile phone, etc. I'll try to get some more information on Life Diary and write a follow up post.

Maeil Business News (link in Korean) reports that Samsung Electronics has been selected as the mobile Wimax equipment provider for UQ Communications, a Japanese mobile broadband service company that's related to Japan's #2 wireless carrier KDDI.

Samsung is also providing mobile Wimax equipment and technologies to Sprint Nextel of the US. Samsung, along with Intel, has been extensively involved with mobile Wimax technologies.

It's expected that mobile Wimax service will be deployed in Japan in 2009, but the service will likely face a tough competition with other high-speed mobile internet standards like "Super 3G" from Docomo, the top dog.

In Korea, mobile Wimax (called "Wibro" here) is struggling to have a market presence. Wibro users are far outnumbered by HSDPA users in Korea. With the recent rise of LTE (Long-term Evolution) as the possible de facto standard for All-IP 4G, mobile Wimax (or Wibro) might find itself in a difficult position, stuck between HSDPA and LTE.

Sony announced it will "invest nearly $1bn in rival Sharp's newest liquid crystal display factory in a bid to meet growing demand for flat-panel televisions and diversify its supply chain".

Now, some Korean folks find this news a bit troubling, thinking this might be a signal that Sony is trying to keep some distance from its rival-cum-partner Samsung.

The thing is, Sony and Samsung had already co-invested billions of dollars in the LCD panel manufacturing joint-venture called S-LCD. Sony has been purchasing LCD panels mainly from S-LCD, and it was naturally expected Sony would make further investment in the joint venture in which the comany had already invested in over a billion dollars. But instead of S-LCD, Sony invested in Sharp - which, to Korea's provincial government, means bilions of dollars of lost FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) opportunity.

To me, Sony's move seems a purely business decision, rather than anything of a nationalistic nature. But some Korean media also expresses concerns that the Japanese electronics giants might be joining forces together (there have been lots of M&A activities in the Japanese electronics industry lately) to seek edge over their Korean rivlas - namely Samsung and LG - amid Samsung's recent difficulties with corruption investigation.

I don't know if Japanese electronics giants are indeed on to gaining turf lost to Korean rivals. I don't know who will eventually come out as a winner in this fierce battle taking place in the global consumer electronics market. But what I do know is that I don't want to be in consumer electronics business. I want to be in iPod business, which not many Korean or Japanese companies seem to be in now.

Maeil Business News (link in Korean) has an in-depth report on the magic hand behind Samsung's design elegance, Mr Jasper Morrison.

Until not long ago, Samsung was a no-name producer of cheap electronics goods. But it's now a symbol of innovation with huge brand value and revenues (#3 among all IT companies in the world, behind only HP and Siemens). One of the key factors for Samsung's dramatic ascend was excellent product design.

To bring it up a notch, Samsung has hired Mr Morrison and let him design Samsung products. Mr Morrison's design philosophy is known to be "Super Normal" - i.e. elegant yet simple and milimalistic. True to this philosophy, Morrison designed some of Samsung's mobile phones (one shown below) and refrigerators.


Under Morrison's design leadership, Samsung is expected to produce more "Super Normal" products in the future. Does this mean we can expect something as game-changing as the iPod, from Samsung? I surely hope so.

Uberme, a Myspace-like blogging/social networking service from Samsung Mobile, has launched. Featurewise, it's got the whole pakcage; videos, photos, blogs, groups, etc. But the key differentiator of Uberme might be its focus on mobile: Uberme aims to provide as good an user experience on mobile phones as on the online.

All in all, the service looks similar to Myspace and Bebo. But then, none of the big name social network services of the US have established a very strong foothold in the Asian market, perhaps except for Windows Live Spaces. This gives Uberme a chance to become a big player in Asia. Uberme is available in 8 Asian countries and now they are doing an interesting promotion called "Uberhot: In search of Asia's hottest guys and gals". Samsung could be the right company to provide this kind of service, given its mobile phones are sold everywhere in Asia.

Although I'm the CEO of a 20 person company now, up until 4 months ago I was with a 200,000 person company - guess where, Samsung. When I was at Samsung Mobile, I was part of this Uberme project. The team behind Uberme, based in Korea and Singapore, are of "uber" quality both professionally and personally.

Team's quality aside, I should ask the long-term viability of this service (Being outside of Samsung, now I can be more objective). Will a manufacturer-driven service be more successful than that of the specialty players (i.e.Youtube for video, Flickr for photo, etc)? For example, If I had bought a Sony digital camcorder, even if Sony offered a video hosting and sharing service, I would probably just want to post my videos up on Youtube than on Sony's service.

Obviously Apple is an exception here: their device-service integration (iPod-iTunes, iMac-Mac.com) have been enormously successful. So, taking a page from Apple's playbook, Samsung will have to do two things very well to make its Uberme service a hit across the Asia: Make a damn good service, and have the service combined with devices (ie. Samsung's superb mobile phones) seamlessly and beautifully.

Samsung Electronics has launched SCH-V960 (currently sold only in Korea) that supports a new way of navigating the phone menus. The central navigation button of SCH-V960 has a touch sensor, allowing the navigation buttons double as a "finger mouse". The finger mouse works just like touchpad on notebook computers. User can also customize the menus on the desktop.

Yesterday, LG had a big launching and PR event for its new product, "The Shine". The Shine was to be a very important product for LG, since the company wants to continue its pleasant rebound, achieved largely by its smash-hit model, the Chocolate (approx 5 million units sold so far).

No wonder LG made sure nothing goes wrong with the Shine's launch, but then suddenly Samsung made a PR on a similar product, just before the Shine launch event.

Samsung's product had already been out there for some time and is not exactly in the same market as the Shine's - Obviously the sole purpose of Samsung's PR was to "dilute" the Shine's market impact and thereby ruining LG's party. Now LG is complaining (quite rightfully I guess) that its 10-month effort for the Shine product launch got marred by Samsung's dirty PR play.

Competition is a good thing, but when the competition gets too heated and becomes a mudfight, that's not pretty at all.