OREANDA-NEWS. SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) announced its earnings on a K-IFRS consolidated basis for the first quarter of 2014: revenue of KRW 4.202 trillion, operating income of KRW 252.4 billion and net income of KRW 267.3 billion.

The revenue rose 3.4% year-on-year(YoY) backed by the increased number of LTE subscribers and growth in new business areas including the enterprise solutions.

As of the end of March 2014, the number of SK Telecom's LTE subscribers (including LTE-Advanced subscribers) marked around 14.7 million, taking up to 56% of the company's total mobile subscriber base. SK Telecom, armed with further strengthened data product competitiveness, expects the LTE subscriber proportion to reach two-thirds of the entire mobile customers by the end of this year. The rising trend of data consumption of customers is also expected to help improve profits over the mid to long term.

Furthermore, the company's enterprise solution business shows stable growth momentum with its sales in the first quarter jumping by 38% YoY to stand at KRW 115.5 billion.

Compared to a year ago, the operating income and the net income dropped 37.6% and 22.7% respectively due to the temporary increase in marketing expenses and payment of compensation for the recent network failure incident.

In the first quarter of 2014, SK Telecom focused on reshaping the market paradigm towards a service/product-oriented competition by commercializing 'T Phone', a communication platform, the first of its kind developed by a mobile carrier, and introducing diverse optional data plans customized for the user's usage patterns including 'T Sports Pack' and 'Btv Mobile Pack'. Also, new services designed to grant benefits to long-term customers such as 'Data Refill' coupons and 'Unlimited T Membership' event received good response as well.

In addition, ICT-based convergence business, the company's another growth engine, is growing at a rapid pace. The company introduced IoT(Internet of Things)-based services including 'T Car', a solution that allows the user to remote control his/her car, and it recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with ETRI(Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute) and LG Hitachi for cooperation in IoT business areas.

SK Telecom will also continue its efforts to maximize differentiated customer value by promoting growth in new business and bringing innovations to its mobile network operation business.

In fact, as the company launched the 'Unlimited LTE Data Plans' and other optional data plans that provide unlimited data as fitted to the user's data usage patterns on April 3, SK Telecom is now equipped with a better environment for data service usage.

Meanwhile, SK Telecom expects its enterprise solution business to keep growing more rapidly. Focusing on key IoT business areas it selected, which include the automobile area aligned with smart car, asset management with regard to cargo and high-value assets and the agricultural sector among others, the company will push forward with the IoT business.

In an effort to secure a leading position in the IoT industry, SK Telecom, together with SK Broadband, has recently completed the environment setup to enable the use of IPv6, the Internet's next generation protocol, across the entire LTE network. With IPv6, each object can be granted an IP address, making two-way communications between objects more efficient.

SK Telecom Chief Financial Officer Hwang Soo-cheol said, “For market stabilization, SK Telecom consistently pursues the market paradigm shift towards service/product-centric competition. Based on its differentiated service/product competitiveness, the company will lead the era of data services.”