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2 Articles for 'wipi'

2009/09/15 SK Telecom App Store: No Shortage Of Criticism (1)
2008/07/17 Korean government mulling over scraping WIPI altogether (3)

SK Telecom App Store: No Shortage Of Criticism

Mobile | 2009/09/15 00:54 | Web 2.0 Asia

Picture from Digital Times

Perhaps SK Telecom shouldn't have launched their newest app store, dubbed "T-Store". There had been a lot of hypes before its launch, but when the SKT T-Store finally got unveiled, people got massively disappointed, if not shocked: Users can browse apps on the web via dedicated PC application, just like on the iPhone app store, but when it comes to downloading the purchased apps, the only possible channel in most cases is via the expensive 3G network -- No download via PC application or Wifi supported (link in Korean).

If someone not subscribed to data unlimited plan downloads a mobile game from SKT app store, he will have to pay around $4-5 for the 3G network usage alone, in addition to paying for the game itself. SKT doesn't give specific warnings on the data charges to be incurred on their app store; Also SKT is charging normal data fees on app store, not the smartphone data fees (about half the price).

Anyone even remotely familiar with iPhone app store wouldn't even call this an app store. This is a PR disaster for SKT too, as they witness an outpouring of complaints from media reporters and bloggers. Twitter is also filled with those "What were they thinking?" twits.

SKT says WIPI is to blame, as WIPI does not allow content download via PC application (the so-called "side loading"). WIPI is the mobile application standard that Korea had kept for a long time, until about a year ago. That might be true; SKT may not have any control over WIPI. But there are things SKT does have a far better control -- things like supporting Wifi on smartphones and lowering the expensive 3G data charges. Believe it or not, while Korea is home to some of the fiercest iPhone fighters (Samsung and LG), most smartphones sold in here do not carry Wifi functionalities altogether, presumably at the request of carriers. Interestingly enough, there is a study (link in Korean) that suggests carriers would actually lose more money if they don't support Wifi, as more 3G usage would mean even heavier investment on building the 3G infrastructure.

TAG SK Telecom, SKT, T-Store, wipi

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Korean government mulling over scraping WIPI altogether

Mobile | 2008/07/17 23:13 | Web 2.0 Asia

Image from Google

WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability) is Korea's standard mobile application platform that's currently required on all mobile phones sold in Korea. WIPI was driven by the Korean government, but the government is now thinking about scraping WIPI altogether.

The original idea behind WIPI was to give interoperability to Korean mobile content providers, who had to re-develop their applications for different carriers that were each using different mobile application platforms. Before WIPI was introduced, SK Telecom was using its own VM (virtual machine), KTF was using Qualcomm's Brew, and LG Telecom used Java. As such, content providers - say a mobile game developer - had to re-develop their applications at least three times if they wanted to serve customers through all three carriers. Multiply this to the number of handsets they had to optimize their apps for, and you could imagine how much pain in the arse it had been for them.

Came for the rescue was WIPI. WIPI was a middleware that could theoretically run both Java (MIDP) and Brew applications on top of it. How wonderful - It was like developer's dreams come true. But in practice, there had been lots of small rough edges; Also, the WIPI requirement effectively kept certain phones from entering into the Korean market, most notably the iPhone. (Do you honestly believe Apple would even toy with the idea of getting WIPI onto their iPhone just for the smallish Korean market?)

WIPI was (and honestly, still is) a noble concept, and it did its part very well. Thanks to WIPI, Korean mobile content developers could save lots of energy and time. But it was still only a Korean standard (despite Korean government's hard efforts to globalize it), and in this open era any technology standard that's bound to a specific country doesn't sound terribly good. So it looks like we'll have to say goodbye to WIPI - and hopefully say hello to iPhone.

TAG iPhone, wipi

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