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| (Provided by SK Telecom) © News1 |
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 10th that it has approved the establishment of a taxi calling joint venture between Uber and Tmap Mobility.
On October 22 of last year, Uber reported a business combination with Tmap Mobility to establish a joint venture that will provide vehicle call service in Korea with a 51 to 49 stake.
Uber is a global vehicle sharing platform operator, and operates’Uber Taxi’, a general taxi calling service, and’Uber Black’, a premium service in Korea. Tmap Mobility is a company founded by SK Telecom by dividing the mobility business division at the end of last year, and provides Tmap taxi, navigation, parking, public transport, and map services.
The joint venture between Uber and Tmap Mobility plans to carry out a business by receiving a vehicle call service from both companies, and Tmap Mobility plans to provide the Tmap Map service transferred from SK Telecom to the joint venture.
The FTC judged whether there was any concern about competition restrictions as a result of examining whether or not the business combination was restricted in the domestic vehicle calling service market where the two companies’ business overlapped, and responded to the results of the examination on the 28th of last month.
The FTC said, “We have comprehensively considered the fact that actual competitive pressure may increase for Kakao T, a strong No. 1 operator,” and “before and after the merger, the market concentration in this market is not significantly changed, and there is competitive pressure from general taxis.” He explained. Kakao T’s share of taxi calls reaches 80%.
The FTC also examined the possibility of restricting competition from the vertical side by receiving guidance from Tmap Mobility for the joint venture.
As a result, it was judged that the possibility of blockade of sales ships by map service providers and purchase ships of map services by vehicle calling service providers was not great.
The FTC added, “This decision is meaningful in laying the foundation for promoting innovation competition in new industries.”