Mobile services sizzle in the summer months

Mobile phone service providers are seeing a jump in business thanks to the summer season. During summertime, people have been using more global roaming service, as well as more data services to look up weather or travel information. KTF, Korea’s second-largest mobile phone service company, said its mobile telephone search service “**114” has been extremely popular in the past few weeks. The average number of users per day in June was 22,000, but in July and August, these figures rose by about 90 percent to 42,000. When this service was first launched earlier this year, fewer than 10,000 people used the service a day, the company said. KTF also said that hot weather was increasing people’s use of food home delivery services. The most frequently searched keywords in mobile Internet services in July were for food that could be ordered from home, such as pizza, jjajangmyeon (Chinese black noodles) and fried chicken. Users for SK Telecom’s wireless Internet reservation service and travel information service NOL shot up from 100 people a day in the off-season to about 1,000 people this month. In the first week of August, as soon as the monsoon rains were over, users of the reservation service for water theme parks jumped to 2,000 people a day. SK Telecom also saw an increase in users for its global roaming service. June users totaled 36,000, and grew to 41,000 in July and 50,000 as of Aug. 4. The company also said that subscribers were using two to three times more of its Nate mobile Internet service in August compared to the previous month. Nate provides information on mobile and Web platforms, including traffic, restaurants and lodging. Companies also noted that users, perhaps on vacation, downloaded more mobile games. KTF said that in the past two months, game downloads tripled compared to previous months. by Wohn Dong-hee