Mobile phone exports have surged for the eighth consecutive month

Korea’s mobile phone exports have surged for the eighth consecutive month. Semiconductor exports recovered $3 billion level a month for the first time since December, reaffirming its status as the largest export item in IT sector. According to May export and import performance of digital electronics announced by The Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) on 4, mobile phone exports for May surged 47.9% from the same month of the previous year to $1.92 billion. Average monthly growth for eight months has been 37.5%, the remarkable performance. The surge was mainly due to huge successes in advanced countries with 3G premium mobile phones and items growing 83.7% in North America and 50.3% in Europe. Semiconductor exports recovered to increase 5.7% a month to $3.9billion, apparent turnaround from -1.6% in September, escaping from long slowdown. Its export to China was $520 million, accounting for one sixth of total export, illustrating IT boom in China directly affecting performance. Color TV exports have continued high growth based on solid growths of LCD•PDP TV with 32.8% growing year-on-year. In particular, Australian market is emerging as a golden market with exponential growths of over 200% in both LCD and•PDP TV. Exports to U.A.E, which is emerging as key market in Middle East due to flooding petro dollars, have also been continuing to hit record highs. Home Appliance exports maintained 14.5% growth year-on-year. Slowdown in demand due to economic slowdown prompted by high oil prices in advanced countries was offset by boom in emerging markets, including Asia, Central and Latin America and Central and East Europe. One noticeable change is that imports of camcorder, medium size refrigerator and electronic game machine surged by 13.2%. Trade balance for entire digital electronics industry in May recorded surplus of $4.85 billion with $10.94 billion in export and $6.13 billion in import. “Mobile phone exports are strong and most of all, semiconductor turned to growth, which is noticeable. It is projected that digital electronics will also prop up total exports in the second half,” said Yoo, Soo-keun, manager of ITC division at MKE.