LG Telecom eyes top spot in mobile internet market

LG Telecom said yesterday it will launch an application store and introduce applications designed specifically for its 3G service OZ.

"It has been two years since OZ was launched and it has been at the head of widening the mobile internet market," LGT president for personal mobile business Jung Il-jae said at a press conference in Seoul.

"With OZ 2.0, the company will take the top spot in the mobile internet (market)."

The company said that it has developed 21 OZ-specific applications that can be downloaded using the icon that will be placed on the main screen of mobile phones.

According to the company, the 21 applications are based on services most commonly accessed from computers, and allow users to access them from mobile phones.



OZ Apps, which will primarily be introduced during March, include the Me2Day micro-blogging service offered by the portal Naver, Cyworld homepage and Daum`s map service.

The applications will be available for both smartphones and conventional handsets, and if possible they will be preinstalled on mobile phones, the company said.

Concerning the company`s plans to set up the OZ Store for applications, the company said that the store will go online during the third quarter of the year and that it will be linked with other open applications stores such as Google`s Android Market.

The company said that it is in talks with Google and other companies running such application sources, and that it is not expecting difficulties in related negotiations.

The company also revealed that it will be including fixed mobile convergence products to OZ 2.0 and include Wi-Fi functionality to most handsets that will be carried on its network.

(cheesuk@heraldm.com)



By Choi He-suk