KT failed ‘Pokemon Go-type app’ 5 years ago

"We are the original creator of Pokémon Go technology…."

This is the title of a post, which earned some 25,000 views on an online community on July 12, when the "Pokémon Go" phenomenon started spreading in Korea. The post shows an image of "Olleh Catch Catch," an augmented realty (AR) app that KT developed and put to market on its own in 2011. As a user projected the smartphone camera on a parking lot in front of his eyes, "Olleh Mon," a red monster character, appeared. The AR service was designed to give KT’s membership points to the user who catches Olleh Mon, but it failed to earn positive response from the public, and disappeared.

Due to the phenomenal success of Pokémon Go that has penetrated daily routines of the public, IT industry insiders say that the possibility for AR to become commonplace among the public is increasing.

Augmented reality (AR) refers to a technology that presents virtual images overlapped on the real world as viewed by the user. AR seemed to be losing popularity for a while due to virtual reality (VR) that gained ground, but AR has just opened up whole new potential in the wake of Pokémon Go’s success.

IT, marketing and other industries introduced en masse marketing tools and games that adopted AR. Olleh Catch Catch was one of them. Spanish accessary brand Loewe developed an AR app that offered a description of a product and video presentation by the designer when the product in a store is viewed through the camera, but stopped the service only after test operation. Niantic, the developer of Pokémon Go, offered the AR game Ingres in many parts of the world in 2013, but the service failed to draw attention. SK Telecom operated in 2011 an AR service that presented community information when an area is viewed through the smartphone camera, but ended the service.

AR research in Korea has continued from around the year 2010. However, companies could not commercialize and failed to widely spread the technology among the public. "Lack of contents" is considered to be the main reason.

Experts say that Pokémon Go’s success is a result of the integration of powerful intellectual property of "Pokémon" character with an environment wherein high-performance smartphones have been widely introduced.

“Powerful contents that prompt people to move is critical for AR, since the user should turn on his or her device (smartphones, glasses) and project it in person,” said Jeon Jin-soo, head of the media tech lab at SK Telecom. “If solid storylines and intellectual property are buttressed by AR’s technological excellence going forward, 'killer apps’ can emerge in Korea as well.”

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