After learning about forecasting in class I found it a compelling subject. What I was most interested in was how it was used in business. After doing some research I found a lot of information on how South Korea is using their forecasting to increase sales and productivity in the cell phone industry. South Korea is using forecasting to predict an incredible increase in 4G LTE phone usage.
Currently, the United States has more users engaging in 4G mobile technology, but South Korea has a higher percentage of users, at about 14% right now, compared to 4% in the United States. This is expected to more than double in the next couple of months. South Korea expects the LTE users to be around 15 million by the end of the year, and be over 33 million by the end of 2013. This forecast predicts that this new technology will give South Korean LTE users the ability to download media faster than any other country.
This impressive usage forecast is predicted not only because South Korean technology users demand the best, but it is so great because many cell phone companies are offering large subsidies for 4G devices, and fading out the old non-4G devices, leaving users the only choice to purchase the new, faster technology.
This could be an major change in the 4G LTE market and in the cell phone industry if this growth does happen, which assumingly would not only take place in South Korea, but also in many other countries around the world. What I find most limiting for this forecast is the amount of infrastructure that will need to be installed to run this large amount of LTE service. Will the world, or more specifically South Korea, be able to handle this enormous increase?
Sources:
http://phys.org/news/2012-06-skorea-big-demand-fastest-mobile.html
http://in.finance.yahoo.com/news/research-markets-south-korea-telecoms-105900581.html
http://www.infonetics.com/pr/2010/2H09-LTE-Infrastructure-Market-Highlights.asp