Asia Times - News and analysis from Korea; North and South

Korea

SK Telecom offers clips from Lord of the Rings

SEOUL - SK Telecom Co, South Korea's biggest cell phone operator, said on Friday that it has begun providing a service that allows users to download clips from the movie Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

The offer, which came less than a week before the motion picture opens in South Korea, is part of a policy to boost revenues through the sale of premium media content.

SK Telecom cell phone users are already able to access a variety of images and video footage from the mobile versions of two previous installments of the fantasy epic - The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers.

Based on a high-speed mobile phone service called CDMA2000 1X EV-DO (evolution data optimized), each download costs 1,500 won (US$1.26), SK Telecom said.

The movie, based on J R R Tolkien's trilogy, is expected to top South Korean box offices, considering ticket reservations, according to media reports. The first two films have earned a combined $1.8 billion and won a total of six Academy Awards.

Since launching the EV-DO service in October last year, SK Telecom has attracted more than 1 million users to its next-generation network.

Of South Korea's 48 million people, some 33.44 million have cell phones. SK Telecom is the market leader with a 54.3 percent share, followed by KTF's 31.3 percent and LG Telecom's 14.4 percent.

(Asia Pulse/Yonhap)

Dec 13, 2003

No material from Asia Times Online may be republished in any form without written permission.

Privacy and Legal Policies