SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest telecom operator, ended the fourth quarter of the year with a total of 13.4 million subscribers in the 5G segment, up from 12.5 million in the previous quarter, the carrier said in its earnings statement.
During last year, SK Telecom recorded a net addition of 3.5 million 5G customers.
At the end of the fourth quarter, the operator’s 5G subscribers accounted for 58% of its overall handset subscribers, up from 52% at the end of September 2022.
In the LTE segment, SK Telecom ended the year with 16.36 million, down from 17.2 million in the previous quarter.
The telco ended Q4 2022 with a total of 32.83 million mobile subscribers, flat versus Q4 2021.
In Q4, the telco’s mobile service revenue rose 1.7% year-on-year to KRW2.6 trillion ($2.1 billion), with ARPU flat at KRW30,495.
Enterprise sales increased 9.7% to KRW391.8 billion, mainly driven by gains in its data center and cloud businesses.
SK Broadband’s revenue increased 2.6 per cent to KRW4.2 trillion.
The telco’s net profit declined 60.8% to KRW947.8 billion, attributed to the exclusion of equity gains from SK Hynix, while consolidated revenue increased 3.3% to KRW17.3 trillion.
SK Telecom said its full-year capex was flat at KRW3 trillion.
In November of last year, the telco’s CEO Ryu Young-sang said that SK Telecom aims to become an artificial intelligence (AI) company.
Ryu stressed that SK Telecom will shape itself into an AI company by combining AI with a wide range of connectivity technologies.
To achieve the new vision, the carrier unveiled the following three strategies designed to innovate its five business groups. Last year, the company rearranged its business into five different groups, namely fixed and mobile telecommunications, media, enterprise, AIVERSE (AI+Universe), and connected intelligence.
Firstly, the carrier said it will redefine its core businesses with AI. By achieving AI transformation of its fixed and mobile telecommunications, media and enterprise businesses, the company said it aims to create new opportunities and growth drivers.
SK Telecom said it will improve the overall process to enable customers to search, subscribe to and use fixed and mobile telecommunications services with greater convenience and ease by applying AI to this entire process.
In the media business, the company said it will integrate its media-related assets that are scattered across diverse media services like IPTV and T Commerce to strengthen its content power. It will also combine AI technology to these assets to offer personalized content to customers.
In enterprise business, it will facilitate AI transformation of its enterprise customers through the six main business areas – namely data center, private network, IoT, cloud, big data and AI.
Secondly, SK Telecom will strengthen customer relationships by applying new technologies and content to AI-based services like ‘A.,’ ‘ifland’ and ‘T Universe.’
Thirdly, SK Telecom said it will invest in or acquire companies that can create greater synergies when combined with its AI technologies.
