nanoomi

New figures from the Korea Communications Commission show that Korea now has more than 10 million registered smartphones. To put this in some perspective, in December 2009 (when the iPhone arrived), there were just 800,000, a number that had shot up to 2.47 million by last June, 7.22 million in December and just over 10 million by the 23rd of this month.

Here’s a pie chart showing ownership by age group:

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NS advertising is poised to hit the big time in Korea, with Koreans fast recognizing the potential of what today’s edaily is calling  ”one-man ads.”

An ideal time, then, for the appearance of a new, streamlined ad service called AdbyMe, which promises to make it easier for Korean firms (or anyone else) to create and distribute ads via SNS, primarily Facebook, Twitter and me2day.

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A couple of stories popped up on Naver search yesterday that suggest how much the ground has shifted beneath Cyworld’s feet, and the challenges it faces in regaining its mojo.

First, from edaily, comes this speculative report that Google’s recent change in CEO could have an intriguing impact on the country’s approach to Korea. Google’s relative failure in social media is widely believed to have been a key factor in the company’s recent decision to replace Eric Schmidt with Larry Page. And with Google co-founder Sergey Brin now reportedly devoting himself to fixing Google’s social strategy, the edaily piece surmises, not unreasonably, that Google’s big new SNS focus could be mobile.

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As an ever increasingly connected world, and as one that now relies on Google more than our own brains (mostly) as a receptacle for knowledge, looking back on the year’s most searched-for terms is always a good way to get the pulse of the people, as well as start pondering what will happen next year as we find ourselves in those odd few days between Christmas and The New Year.

For your reading pleasure, I’ll look at Google International results, then focus on what Koreans have been searching for on the increasingly ever-popular (in Korea) Google.

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Google’s relative anonymity in Korea has long been a symbol of the country’s peculiar mix of extreme high-tech and general disdain for international internet platforms and standards. In a country with some of the fastest internet connections and highest rates of broadband penetration in the world, many websites still use Adobe Flash or ActiveX, and it’s not uncommon for web designers to be completely unaware of Firefox, let alone Chrome.

Even today, Google holds just 1.2 percent of the portal market on Korean PCs. But a look at the figures for mobile devices, from this piece on ZDNet, reveals a very different picture.

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From the Korean social media news:

• On Interactive Dialogue & PR 2.0, Juny takes a brief look at the explosive growth of social commerce in Korea. While saying the possibilities for social commerce are “boundless” here, he cautions that there are numerous issues to be overcome.  He then leads into a series of documents and tables from the Altimeter Group including a link to an apparently free but (for anyone in Korea) nastily timed webinar about the rise of social commerce.
• As if in to illustrate Juny’s point, on November 20th came a report from SBS that what it calls “social shopping” is already spawning a wave of opportunities for purveyors of “속빈 강정,” or  ”hollow rice crackers” (ie, empty promises). It cites one restaurant that promised 50 percent off its beef intestines — that is, one serving, or 300g, for 16,000 won instead of 32,000 won — if more than 100 people signed up for it online. Unfortunately, when the customers went to redeem their vouchers, they found out that the restaurant owners were including the weight of the plate as part of the 300g. When the plate was removed, the serving shrank to 200g.

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A few months ago, something peculiar happened on my Twitter feed. Having only recently started using my long dormant account, I was slowly building up a list of contacts and news feeds when I got an e-mail saying that someone from my recent past in Korea was now “following” me. That, in itself, wasn’t odd, but his identity did give me a bit of a jolt: It was my 40-something ex-boss at Morning Calm, a man I’d never have pictured being into social networking sites, least of all a foreign and (to me at that point) relatively marginal one such as Twitter.

As a long-standing and very active Facebook user, I had noticed a gradual increase in use among my Korean friends. From virtually zero a couple of years ago, I had befriended perhaps 40 or 50 Koreans over the intervening months. With very few exceptions, however, those friends would conform to a certain pattern, namely, in their 30s or younger, more internationally oriented (due to their work or upbringing) and English speaking. As a result, Facebook’s progress, at least among Koreans I knew, was slow and steady, rather than all-conquering as it had been back home.

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As the bad workman did with his tools, I blame the camera.

At least, I hope I’m not entirely to blame for the pics from my recent trip to the Korea Electronics Show being so terrible. Though it wasn’t all as zippy and space age as you might expect, the show did have some cool stuff, whose visual splendour I singularly failed to capture in the shots below.

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This past Saturday was Hangeul Day, and it was celebrated in various ways. Google altered its insignia to incorporate Hangeul (a more pleasant unloading of han onto Google than complaints about the naming of the East Sea and Dokdo on Google Maps):

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