South Korea uses mobile phones for everything

Nytimes.com investigated South Korea’s population on mobile phone most popular usage goals, as South Koreans use their mobile phone for nearly everything. 

In spite of applying to their phones as to the games and music device, South Koreans use their phones as a subway pass, to pay for both virtual and digital products, to watch TV, as an e-reader for books and comics. That’s why nytimes.com sees the mobile future for South Korea. 

Mobile payments is one of the impacts that South Korean carriers and tech companies are making heartening the development. 

Thus, year, 4 million South Koreans purchased items, including music, videos, ringtones, game subscriptions and newspaper articles, among other online items, that totaled 1.7 trillion won (or $1.4 billion), and charged them to their phone bills. Carriers and banks are now trying to widen the use of mobile payments with new payment products. Thereby, last year South Koreans started using T-money, electronic cash that is stored and refilled in the SIM cards and other chips in their phones

M-payments still remain a very tiny part of e-banking. In 2008, online payments reached 22.8 trillion won (or $18.3 billion), of which 151 billion won (or $121 million), or less than 1% came from mobile phones.