Keeping Track of Laundry on Wireless Web

Posted by: Moon Ihlwan on April 17

Deliverymen from DHL and FedEx around the world keep records of their courier services in company-provided PDAs. From next month, South Korean laundry stores could keep records of laundry orders and delivery through the mobile Web by using mobile phones, according to SK Telecom, the country’s largest mobile carrier.

SK. Samsung Electronics and a startup solution provider have teamed up to roll out the service in Korea, where deliverymen from laundry stores visit house to house to pick up and drop clothes. SK, which boasts one of the world’s high-speed mobile networks, will charge laundry stores 11 cents per transaction on top of a $25 monthly fee allowing up to 1 gigabytes of data traffic. Then, SK will split the income with startup Keyprize that developed the business model and will run servers for the service. Samsung came up with a smart phone for the service.

SK, which is trying hard to find new business models in the lack of new voice users, says it has also developed similar services for other industries. Insurance salespeople, construction engineers and utility company service forces could all use cell phones instead of relying on specially-designed PDAs to get access to corporate Intranet to process customer data while they are on the go. SK hopes the new handsets will help Korean companies to take advantage of the country’s wireless broadband networks to free up their employees from their desks.

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