South Korea’s second largest cellco by subscribers, KTF, has reported a 37% drop in quarterly profit as a result of higher marketing costs designed to attract subscribers to its HSDPA service. KTF launched the 3.5G service nationally in March, hoping that services such as video calls would help it capture market share away from SK Telecom. KTF posted a SKW51.1 billion (USD55.9 million) net profit in the quarter ended 30 June 2007 compared to a SKW80.6 billion profit in the same period of 2006. Revenue rose 10% to SKW1.8 trillion.
At the end of June KTF claimed a 32% share of the wireless market, with 13.5 million subscribers, behind SKT’s 21.36 million but ahead of LG’s 7.45 million. 5.78 million of KTF’s base were connected to its EV-DO platform, while 941,000 were connected to its W-CDMA network.