South Korea To See Location-based Services Grow To $1.1 Billion

South Korea's location-based services (LBS) market will grow 23 percent this year due to being backed by new tracking services and big data analytics, the government has said.

In 2018, the country's LBS market was worth 1.02 trillion won, the Korea Internet Security Agency (KISA) said, with the market set to grow 23 percent to 1.2546 trillion won ($1.11 billion) this year.

Last year, tracking and monitoring services -- for both people and objects -- accounted for 32.8 percent of the LBS market. Providing location data accounted for 17.2 percent.

Big data analytics, advertisements, and commerce accounted for a smaller portion of the market, but showed higher growth, KISA said.

In a survey conducted by the agency on 930 companies registered as LBS providers, 59.8 percent of the respondents believed content would be the biggest area of development.

30.4 percent of the companies that responded to the survey also complained that there is a lack of proper law and regulation surrounding LBS.

GPS-based services have flourished over the past five years thanks to new mapping and navigation services.

Cab chauffeur services such as KakaoTaxi are used by most South Koreans in their daily lives.

Child and pet monitoring services like smart tags are also very popular.

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