Web 2.0 Asia

The National Internet Development Agency of Korea (NIDA) announced the list of most popular mobile websites accessed via WINC.

As background info, WINC is the new and easier way of accessing mobile websites, proposed by NIDA and implemented on over 90% of mobile phones sold in Korea. Instead of typing the long and complex mobile URLs on cellphone keypads, users can just type a simple phone number and press the mobile internet key (you know - those buttons with "i" or "n" on them) to get connected to mobile websites. For instance, type "131", press the n key, and you are on the weather forecasting mobile website.


Obviously, not everyone who uses mobile internet accesses via WINC, so the "most popular WINC sites" list may not exactly represent the most popular mobile sites. Anyhow, the popular WINC sites for 2007 came out to be:

• Bus schedule service, City of Daegu
  
• Bus schedule service, City of Seoul
  
• Naver Mobile (portal)
  
• Daum Mobile (portal)
  
• Hanguk Economy News TV
  
• Chosul Ilbo (newspaper)
  
• Gamevil (mobile game)
• Com2Us (mobile game)
• Samsung Securities (stock trading site)

It's a bit surprising that bus schedule sites topped the list - But maybe it's understandable because young students use the mobile internet most and for them bus schedule might be very important information.