Orascom Comments on Investment in North Korea's Mobile Network

I commented late last month on the meeting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had with Naguib Sawiris, Chairman and CEO of Orascom Telecom.  Today an interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald by Eric Ellis, gives some insight into how Sawiris views his company's investment in North Korea.  Ellis interviewed Sawiris in Egypt in early January.

Orascom, the article noted, is a classic example of a company where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
Like North Korea, where the value of the Koryolink JV "is either zero, or $5 billion. If there is reunification, then I will be the incumbent of North Korea, and my value will be something like [South Korean carriers] SK Telecom or Korea Telecom," Sawiris said.
"If there is a war and they unify after the war, it is still the same, depending on who wins, of course. And if they take the asset, then it is worth zero. There is no between value [in North Korea] because who will buy? No one else has the relationship that we are building there."

Android and Korea's Handset Makers

There is new evidence that Android will become the dominant mobile platform worldwide, if present trends continue, and this has a powerful effect on Korea's handset makers, led by Samsung and LG.  As reported in The Wall Street Journal and shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see full-size version) shipments of Android-based smartphones surged sevenfold year-on-year in the fourth quarter giving Android a 33% share of the global market.  This year HTC, Samsung and LG Electronics, all of which made late entries into the smartphone market, plan to further their push with the introduction of new Android models in order to meet lofty sales goals.  Samsung reached its goal of selling 20 million smartphones in 2010 and more than 50 percent of those models were Android-based.  LG showed improved sales results from its Android-based Optimus One handset, selling three million units since its launch in the second half of last year.

College Graduate Unemployment Hits Ten-year High

As reported in The Korea Times, data compiled by Statistics Korea show that the number of unemployed college graduates rose to an all time high last year, despite the faster-than-expected economic recovery.  The pattern of unemployment among college graduates over the past ten years is shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full-size version).  Finance ministry officials noted that there is a wide gap between employers demands and college graduates expectations for the level of their jobs.  They also noted that there is a structural problem in the job market--college graduates favor larger companies rather than smaller ones, while the number of jobs available at the former is limited.  Obviously, the growth of one-person enterprises spurred by the popularity of the iPhone and Android phones in Korea, as noted in an earlier post, has not yet had impact on overall employment statistics.

To solve these problems with the jobless growth among the well educated young, the government is seeking ways of restructuring college systems and improving job education programs for students. To promote the restructuring of college and universities, the government will encourage schools to make public the employment rate of their graduates, as well as support active merger and acquisitions of poorly managed schools,a ministry official said.