A Comparative Study on the Diffusion of Smartphones in Korea and Japan

Recently, there has been a diffusion of smart phones in Korea and Japan. We investigated the driving forces behind this diffusion by analyzing smart phone driving usage by a component model. There were four main findings. 1) Driving usage of smart phones is very popular in both Korea and Japan. Both countries have the highest average smart phone traffic per user in the world. 2) The Korean government and private Korean companies support the diffusion of smart phones. People in both Korea and Japan have started using smart phones at work as well as for fun, and some companies even support their employees´ smart phone purchases and share the monthly charge. 3) Telecommunication companies and smart phone manufacturers are currently trying to expand their application stores. Korea Telecom, Samsung, and NTT DoCoMo have set aside funds for application developers and the development of tools. 4) The bargaining power of telecommunication companies is beginning to wane against Apple and Google.