South Korea’s SK Telecom and KT Corp are expanding their rivalry into a new niche created by the smartphone craze: the global market for educational robots

July 2, 2013 Leave a comment

July 2, 2013, 12:58 AM

SK Telecom, KT Corp Race to Market Robots

By Min-Jeong Lee

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SK Telecom’s Atti robot; KT Corp.’s Kibot

South Korea’s top two mobile carriers are expanding their rivalry into a new niche created by the smartphone craze: the global market for educational robots. SK Telecom Co. 017670.SE -0.49% and KT Corp. 030200.SE +0.71% have each come up with devices that either connect to a smartphone or use the phone as a “brain” to help preschool children learn basic language and mathematics skills. SK Telecom will launch a robot called Atti in September for the local market and is holding talks with potential partners overseas for a global rollout, a spokeswoman said. The company marketed a similar robot, called Albert, last year. Atti has a cradle that allows users to load an Android smartphone with a screen size of 4.6 inches to 5.5 inches. The smartphone functions as the brain of the device, reading and interpreting books out loud for children. Atti has a round body embedded with various sensors and speakers and two short feet with wheels. “The company set up a separate voice database for preschoolers considering their inaccurate pronunciation to ensure flawless and friendly interaction between preschoolers and the robots,” SK Telecom said in a statement. KT Corp.’s Kibot comes with features closer to an independent robot. It is 32 centimeters tall, with a rectangular face that has a seven-inch screen. The company recently launched an upgraded version of the robot, Kibot 2, which it started supplying to Saudi Arabia starting April. It plans to sell the robot in other regions depending on demand. Kibot can be controlled through a smartphone. One of the robot’s interesting features is a beam projector attached to back of its head, capable of projecting 60-inch images to a wall. Parents can also monitor their children through a camera embedded on the robot’s forehead. Both KT and SK Telecom are hoping thedemand for educational materials will help drive sales, but robots have been a challenging product to commercialize, with the most sophisticated and futuristic ones still far from reach of the general public. Cleaning robots have been one of the few cases where the category has shown signs of success.

 

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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