Invest KOREA

The popularity of Android smartphones in South Korea has been driven by its partnerships with the country's mobile device makers and wireless operators, top executives at Google Inc. said Wednesday.

"Korea is just exploding with Android," Eric Schmidt, the company's chief executive officer, said at a press meeting during the mobile fair in Barcelona, Spain. "It was one of our first targets because of the sophistication of the hardware manufactures."

Since the first Android device was released about one year ago, South Korean consumers have seen a flux of Android devices made by Samsung Electronics Co., LG Electronics Inc., Pantech Co., HTC Corp. and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.

The penetration rate of Android devices in the population is higher in South Korea than in any other country in the world, according to Google.
 

"Two of our very large partners are Samsung and LG. I think it all goes down to partnerships we built and the relationships with both the operators and manufacturers," said Andy Rubin who oversees Android at Google.

"Android being the open platform, I think it was seized upon by these guys to help them build better products and to compete more effectively," Rubin said.

Samsung and LG built their flagship smartphones and tablet computers on the Android system in efforts to play catch up with Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd. Samsung, the world's second-largest mobile phone maker, recently manufactured the Nexus S phone with Google in the latest series of their collaboration.

Android has grown into the world's largest smartphone operating system by shipments in the fourth quarter, topping Nokia Corp.'s Symbian, according to research firm Canalys. In the last two years, some 170 mobile devices adopted the operating system that charges no fees, Google said. Around 300,000 Android phones are being activated every day in about 96 countries, it added.

The growth of Android devices have helped the U.S. company gain stronger footing in Asian countries where its traditional search business has underperformed due to the stiff competition from home-grown service providers. Android's spread is expected to assist Google to gain ground by giving more consumers better access to its mobile products in Asia such as mobile search, voice services and maps, market watchers said.

Google has not always made strides in the South Korean market, however. Last month, the local police pressed charges against the U.S. company for grabbing data wirelessly with Google's Street View cars, accusing Google of violating the country's telecommunications law.

"We disagree with (the investigation)," Schmidt said. "We think people do not understand the details of what was going on."

But he remained upbeat that the case will be resolved positively and that Korean authorities will eventually see that Google's data collection was not intended.

"The single engineer wrote codes that were unauthorized," he said. "Google is not perfect. In this case, we identified the problem and we notified the authority."

Source: Yonhap News (Feb. 16, 2011)