“There is no concern about competition restrictions such as increased pressure on Kakao”
April official service release… Cataclysm of the taxi calling industry
The “flying taxi” released by Uber. Photo = Yonhap News
The Fair Trade Commission announced on the 10th that it has approved the establishment of a joint venture (JV) between Uber, the world’s number one ride-sharing company, and Tmap Mobility.
In October of last year, Uber reported to the FTC that it was establishing a joint venture with Tmap Mobility to operate vehicle call service in Korea with a 51:49 stake.
In Korea, Uber provides a general taxi calling service’Uber Taxi’ and a premium taxi calling service’Uber Black’. Tmap Mobility is a company founded by SK Telecom by dividing the mobility business division at the end of last year.
The joint venture will transfer vehicle call service from both companies. Tmap Mobility plans to provide the T Map map service transferred from SK Telecom to this joint venture.
The Fair Trade Commission reviewed the joint venture’s domestic vehicle calling service market as a result of whether or not there was any concern about competition restrictions, and responded to the results of the review on the 28th of last month.
An official from the FTC said, “The market concentration in the domestic vehicle calling service market is not significantly changed before and after the merger, and there is competition pressure from general taxis. Rather, there is real competitive pressure against Kakao T, the strong No. 1 operator in this market. It was determined that there was no concern about restrictions on competition, taking into account that it could be improved.”
“As a result of examining the possibility of restricting competition that may occur in a vertical aspect by receiving maps from Tmap Mobility, the possibility of blocking sales ships by map service providers or blocking map service purchase ships by vehicle calling service providers was not great.” He added.
SK Telecom formed the K-UAM dream team to lead the era of flying cars. Photo = Provided by SK Telecom
The joint venture between Uber and Tmap Mobility plans to launch an official service in April. Tmap Mobility is in charge of’T Map Auto’ for finished vehicles such as navigation T Map and in-vehicle payment,’On-Demand Service’ such as taxi calling and proxy driving, and’Subscription Mobility Business’. It is planning to enter the domestic taxi calling business in earnest through the operation of a joint venture with Uber. To this end, Uber invests 100 million dollars (about 1145 billion won).
In a recent performance conference call, Hyung-il Ha, head of SK Telecom’s Corporate 2 Center, said, “The establishment of a taxi association with Tmap Mobility and Uber and the launch of the official service will take place in April.” “Based on Tmap, the corporate value of 4.5 trillion won in 2025. To achieve this, we plan to expand existing businesses such as the Tmap Life Platform in the consumer-to-consumer transaction (B2C) area and advertisement insurance parking, and launch a subscription-type membership service.”
With SK Telecom’s declaration of entry into the mobility business, the domestic mobility market is expected to change significantly.
Kakao Mobility is the overwhelming number 1 operator in the domestic vehicle calling field with a market share of about 80%. SK Telecom’s T-map taxi registered driver is only 200,000 and 750,000 monthly users, ranking second in Korea, but it is observed that Uber’s brand power and service management know-how can surpass Kakao, the No. 1 taxi driver.
The strong point of SK Telecom, the navigation service T Map, has a monthly active user (MAU) of close to 12 million, and has about twice as many users as Kakao Navi.
Reporter Joara Hankyung.com [email protected]