When I went through this article from Digital Chosunibo I could not do anything else that roll on the floor laughing.

SK Telecom has launched a new service dedicated to fishermen that will allow them to monitor the depth and temperature of the water where they are fishing and will show them the location of fish. The system will work using a float-shaped ultrasonic transmitter that is connected to a cell phone on one end and a fishing line on the other.

That’s quite funny. I cannot imagine the market penetration of such a service. Maybe in Korea they have a lot of fishermen.

I use to fish during weekends and I would say that I would use such a service.

SK Telecoms is not new to these kind of announcements. Some time ago they launched a service that was already targeting fishermen and was able to make mosquito fly away using a mobile phone generated tone. Just have a look at the original article for a scientific explanation on how this work.

If you read this you may think these are jokes.

The most interesting thing about SK Telecom comes at the end of the article.

SK Telecoms has already 1.300 services providers and last year they received 5.000 proposals for new service to be launched.

That’s the way innovation should work for a mobile operator. Look at everything that comes on your desk, make these proposal go through your innovation process to distill only the very good ones and launch them.

That seems to be pretty easy. In the reality we all know that this is not as easy as depicted.

I would like to ask SK Telecom a few questions:

• Which is the department in charge for the selection of these new services? Marketing, Innovation, R&D?
• How many people are employed in these departments?
• How does the selection process works?
• Do you have a unified business model you use with your services provider or it is analyzed on every single service?
• How do you price these services?
• How do you communicate new services to your customer base?

And, finally, how many fishermen do you have in Korea?

Why do I blog this? Well, I am always intrigued by new services and by the process that brings them to the market.