3D CAD in Korea, Japan, Taiwan

Disclaimer: This document was created in 2000 and has not been revised since.

The objective of this section is simply to summarize the key Korean e-manufacturing players/influencers discovered during the mapping exercise. Hundred's of relevant Web sites were visited and condensed to the "useful" list detailed in the Appendix. This subset of that list constitutes the most influential players; confirmed and verified after more than 50 hours of focused browsing; in each relevant Internet area. (*2004 note - these links are not confirmed and many mat be broken. If I get time I will check and relink.)

i. Government

South Korea's government is very proactive in all areas of IT investment with a total committed IT infrastructure investment and support budget of $3.7bn in the five year period 1999 - 2004. The Ministry of Communications "MIC" is the government department primarily responsible to set national IT and Internet policy. The Ministry of Commerce & Energy "MOCIE" also has some secondary responsibility. The MIC typically channels investment funding both directly and through the Electronics & Telecommunications Research Institute "ETRI".

The Small & Medium Business Association "SMBA" is directly responsible to support and promote SMEs.

ii. Telecoms

The South Korean government began the deregulation of the telecoms industry in 1990 when DACOM entered the market as the first private long-distance carrier. Hanaro Telecom became the second private local carrier in 1997, but Korea Telecom "KT" maintains a 99.7% share of that sector. KT is semi-privatized with the government's ownership to be further reduced to 33% after another sell-off of stock this year.

There are over 30 private telecoms in the market, with the major competition being in the mobile sector dominated by SK Telecom (43.3%), Shinsegi Telecom (14.6%), and KT Freetel (17.6%). Consolidation is beginning to occur, with KT Freetel likely to double its market share through the planned acquisition of Hansol M.com (11.1%).*2004 note - Shinsegi Telecomwas acquired by SK Telecom in Jan. 2002.

iii. Manufacturing industry associations

South Korea has a large number of trade and industry associations, most of whom have well developed Web presences: of these there are five sites of interest to ASP-CAD. The Korea Association of Machinery Industry "KOAMI" is South Korea's largest such association with over 1,200 member companies. The Korea Machine Tool Manufacturers' Association "KOMMA" is much smaller and has ties with TAMI in Taiwan. The Korea Die & Mold Industry Cooperative "KODMIC" and the Korea Tools Industry Cooperative "KOTIC" are sister organizations, each with 400 members. The Society of CAD/CAM Engineers may also be of use during the market entry phase. One point: none of these sites shows more than 70,000 visits: the CAD/CAM site has just 3,100 in the past two months.

iv. CAD CAM-CAE Software Developers

Forty or so CAD CAM companies are listed in the appendix but there several times that number on the South Korean Internet. With over 4,000 domestic software companies, South Korea justifiably has an active software industry organization, the Korea Software Association "KOSA". The most significant developers, and those most likely to be useful during the ASP-CAD market launch, are ATES which specializes in CAE/CFD and virtual manufacturing consulting, CAMTech which offer consulting and 2D/3D data-exchange between most CAD CAM systems, CubicTek who have a very strong CAD CAM development capability, Hurbin Software is a custom CAD CAM developer (maybe similar to Japan's Armonicos), KCS is a developer of CAD CAM already exporting to Japan and TurboTek is a prolific CAD CAM development company founded in 1988. In addition to IronCAD, Maru International distributes several 3D multimedia modeling packages.

v. Online CAD CAM-CAE Communities

Despite the national obsession with the Internet, most South Koreans do not yet seem to have realized the full two-way potential of the medium; especially in the business sector. Although most Web sites have a very high standard of design and layout, they tend to be very one-way (i.e. pushing data to the user) as opposed to forums or communities that encourage two-way communication and interaction. Whether this is a reflection of South Korean culture or simply an opportunity waiting to be taken remains to be seen.

Most Korean CAD CAM distributors, particularly those who deal in more than one vendor's solutions, have online forums/communities attached to their Web sites, but those forums tend to be relatively constrained. There are at least three "true" (i.e. at least apparently independent) online communities with very extensive (and often very low-level detail on fundamentals of geometric modeling) CAD CAM coverage, of possible interest to ASP-CAD. The most commercial site with the most noticeable forum activity and the partner of choice for ASP-CAD is CADKorea, the most sophisticated site, covering just about every CAD CAM-CAE system ever built (even kernel modelers) is KoreaCAD Forum (although its forum boards are scarcely used) and the most informal and as yet noncommercial site is 3DCAD. With the exception of CADKorea these forums seem to be amateur part-time efforts (although content quality is very extensive) and could be very low cost acquisition opportunities.

vi. Online Manufacturing ASPs

There is at least one manufacturing ASP in the South Korean market: the localized version of CoCreate's OneSpace Collaboration Station is hosted by SungWoo Systems. Another company, CIES, a Catia, Deneb, Tecoplan and PDM integrator, already has a "members only" intranet area on their site which may be some kind of initial ASP offering. There are several Catia integrators in the South Korean market so it may be that CIES is not constrained to Dassault and could be a good partner for ASP-CAD.

vii. ISPs

There are 64 ISPs registered with the Korea Network Information Center "KRNIC" with the highest growth occurring in the broadband and wireless segments. The present explosive market growth is allowing most ISPs to remain profitable but consolidation is beginning to occur as the major ISPs fight to secure their long-term positions, particularly in the wireless sector.

According to official KRNIC statistics the largest consumer ISPs are Dacom's BoraNet and KT's HiTel.net each with 3m subscribers followed by Unitel with 2.4m subscribers. NASDAQ listed Thrunet has 80% of the broadband cable market with 350,000 subscribers followed by Hanaro Telecom's Hananet with 37,000 subscribers. Hananet leads the broadband xDSL market with 415,000 subscribers followed by KT's Kornet with 330,000 subscribers. Kornet leads the business/leased-line(T1/2/3) ISP market with 20,000 subscribers followed by Boranet with 10,000 subscribers, PSINet Korea with 5,500 subscribers and Shinbiro with 2,800 subscribers.

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