SK Telecom’s telephone application ‘T Phone’ and phone book application ‘T Phone Book’ have recorded more than three million MAUs (monthly active users) each. Having exceeded the MAU of an Internet portal phone book service, SK Telecom’s T Phone and T Phone Book are evaluated to have demonstrated the potential of the success of ‘common carrier apps.’

According to a market surveyor Nielsen Korean Click, T Phone recorded the MAU of 3.45 million last month. Compared to 56,780 in February when the first was released, the MAU increased by more than 60 times. Last month, T Phone Book also recorded the MAU of 3.02 million, which grew by around nine times from 350,000 earlier this year.

What is noteworthy is that T Phone and T Phone book surpassed the traffic volume of ‘Naver Address Book,’ which is a service in the same category from a leading web portal Naver. The MAU of Naver Address Book last month was 990,000, which is only around one third that of T Phone and T Phone Book.

T Phone Book and T Phone surpassed Naver Address Book’s traffic volume for the first time in June and July respectively and have since been widening the gap further. As for the total time spent, that of the two services is longer by more than three times than Naver Address Book. With its pride crumpled by the popularity of T Phone and T Phone Book, Naver is preparing to upgrade its address book service, according to sources.

Despite the advantage of being mounted on users’ devices in advance, most apps from common carriers are being neglected in the market because of their low degree of completion. This is why the success of T Phone and T Phone Book is evaluated as unprecedented. Both T Phone and T Phone Book are receiving favorable comments for the service to combine data access in addition to the simple call function. With the apps, users can search phone numbers and information of stores they are after and check the information in a video format.

Based on the two services, SK Telecom is accelerating its entry to the O2O (online to offline) market. ‘T114’ applied to the two services provides offline store phone number search function. To find the phone number of a nearby Chinese restaurant, users connect to T Address Book and execute a search with the keyword ‘Chinese restaurant.’ Then, they can make an order using T Phone. If users give consent to location information access, information of stores is exposed on the screen in the order from the one nearest to the users’ current locations. Recently, SK Telecom started providing an offline store map service through cooperation with Daum Kakao. It will soon provide a convenient delivery service using the two apps through business tie-up with delivery apps.

“We will strengthen our O2O capacity by entering into partnership with telephone-based service providers like Baemin,” said Director Wi Eui-seok of SK Telecom Product Planning Division. “We will also actively cooperate with Daum Kakao.”

T Phone is available only to SK Telecom users and does not support iOS version. These are the issues SKT must tackle in order to achieve the service diffusion. In relation to this, Executive Director Wi said, “We are seeking for ways to cooperate with KT and LGU+.” He added, “We will consult with Apple so as to release an iOS version in the near future.” “T Phone and T Phone Book were devalued in the initial phase by reason of being applications of a common carrier. However, recently, we are receiving favorable feedbacks.” He continued, “Our goal is to improve the service quality so that customers opt for SK Telecom because they like the telephone app.”

Jeong Jin-wook | jjwinwin@etnews.com