Research Article
Global Strategy of SK Telecom
1 Hanyang University, 2 Ajou University
Published: January 2007 · Vol. 10, No. 2 · pp. 47-65
Full Text
Abstract
The history of SK Telecom’s globalization goes back to the middle of 1990’s. In the pursuit of being a truly global leader in the world telecom market, SK Telecom has gone abroad as a way to find a new source for growth in the period of worldwide open market policy. The countries where SK Telecom had done or has been doing business are located from near Asia to far American continent. In the beginning, SK Telecom used to have hard times due to unfavorable business circumstances and lack of experience of globalization. However, they tried very hard to the final moment with a dream of SK Telecom to be a leader in the worldwide telecommunication market. Up to now, SK Telecom has made a success in some businesses, but failed in the others. As Korean mobile telecommunication market has been mature, the market growth rate has been getting flatter. This is one of the reasons why the market gets more competitive and profits falls. In this era, the success of globalization is very important for SK Telecom which needs new growth engines to be a world market leader. In this case, we talk about three main issues. First, the process of globalization of SK Telecom so far can be categorized into three phases. We will discuss 뮤out what the characteristics of each phase are. Second, SK Telecom has an experience of both success and failure in globalization. By analyzing past experiences, SK Telecom will get many good ideas what it should do for successful future globalization. We will analyze why some of SK Telecom’s global business have ended in failure. Finally, we will derive SK Telecom’s global strategy focusing on where to go and what kind of business it should emphasize on.
