Wednesday, April 1, 2009

The Korean Mobile Phone Industry: Mid-Entry Strategy

Korea has adopted the mid-entry strategy in developing the CDMA-based mobile phones. The mid-entry strategy chooses the entry point of R&D projects in the mid-stage of technological development. This strategy uses research results already produced by someone else, but not commercially exploited.

ETRI, Korea’s government-sponsored research institute utilized the basic technology, the baseband chip, owned by U.S.-based Qualcomm and cooperated with local companies for the development of the CDMA-based digital handsets. Three chaebols, Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, and one medium-sized company, Maxon cooperated with ETRI to conduct the development project. In 1996 the first CDMA digital cellular phone service in the world was successfully commercialized. Lacking the basic research capacities, this mid-entry technology strategy seemed to be well suited for the Korean mobile phone makers.

Note: A detailed analysis on this topic won’t be shared due to the proprietary nature of the content.

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