Models publicizes the artificial intelligence service NUGU SK Telecom developed.

SK Telecom is stepping on the gas to nurture service-type platforms, as such platform companies as Google, Facebook and Kakao does. 

What SK Telecom did first in this regard was the opening of its popular navigation app “T-Map” to the general public free of charge. In the past, subscribers of SK Telecom’s rivals had to pay for a fee of 4,000 won per month. The Korean telecom service provider opened its customer’s exclusive call app “T-Phone” and cloud service “T Cloud” for keeping pictures and videos, allowing its rival telecommunications service provider to use them. 

SK Telecom has also begun to release its own technologies to the public. The company is opening the application programming interface (API), a set of subroutine definitions, protocols, and tools for building software and applications. 

This move is designed to create an environment in which outside developers are allowed to work on their own development of services related to SK Telecom. A company’s development of its own technology without outside help has become a global bygone trend. If outside developers make apps using SK Telecom’s API, they will be allowed to apply for a log-in into T accounts and to be connected with the T-Pay, T-Map and other services of SK Telecom. 

Thirty-one API domains have been released free of charge on the Internet website T-Develops (developers.sktelcom.com). About 2,000 outside projects using the API are under way. 

Monthly applications for sing the APIS stand at as much as about 2,000. 

SK Telecom decided to reveal the API of the artificial intelligence service NUGU the company has been developed aggressively to the outside by the next first half. 

The move is designed to spread the NUGU to other areas, including shopping, medical care and security. 

“Facebook has managed to grow fast as the company has begun to release its API to outside developmers,” an SK Telecom official said. Developers have begun to create an ecosystem of SK Telecom, he added. 

Patents owned by SK Telecom have been released to the outside. 

SK Telecom has handed over nine patents of its own, including the one on an optical engine, to the startup Cremotech free of charge. Cremotech has dev eloped a supersmall beam project using the free patent and reaped exports worth 10 billion won to the United States. SK Telecom has decided to expand its product portfolios to other areas in which its rivals have never tapped by offering diverse supports to startups and turning to joint development. 

SK Telecom President Jang Dong-hyun has been spearheading the open innovation initiative. Since April 2015 when he took office, President Jang stressed the need for a shift to a platform business operator through openness and collaboration. 

SK Techx, a platform maker, has been spun out of SK Planet and became a subsidiary of SK Telecom. SK Tech is now planning such service platforms as T-Pay, T-Life and smart home.

SK T-Tower in Euljiro, downtown Seoul. (Photos: SK Telecom)