Business agreement with Korea Blind Union... Securing 5,000 subscribers.
“Technology should be fair to everyone. SMplanet's ultimate vision is to narrow the digital information gap by increasing information accessibility for the digitally underprivileged and expand social participation of the people who are visually impaired."
SMplanet (CEO Hyun-sun Cho), which is participating in the ‘Close-to-Life Contact-Free Leading Service Project’ implemented by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (Chairman Seong-wook Heo, hereafter referred to as NIPA), is a social enterprise that develops and supplies smartphone software for the people who are visually impaired.
‘Close-to-Life Contact-Free Leading Service Project’, which this company is participating for the second year this year, is a project that NIPA has been implementing since last year. It is a project that develops, demonstrates, and spreads contact-free leading services that are closely related to the daily life of the people, and the response from participating companies is very positive. SMplanet, which operates the only smartphone consultation call center for the people who are visually impaired in Korea, has been selected as a free task (contact-free shopping) and is carrying out the project. They are developing, demonstrating and supplying contact-free digital platform AI for the people who are visually impaired.
The company, located in Asan, Chungcheongnam-do, started developing and servicing smartphones for the people who are visually impaired in earnest since 2017. While carrying out a mobile communications marketing business for the digitally underprivileged, they realized that that although the percentage of the people who visually impaired owning smartphones is high, they have great difficulties in using smartphones. In 2018, after signing a business agreement with Korea Blind Union, it started developing smartphones for the people who are visually impaired and has currently secured about 5,000 subscribers.
Hyun-sun Cho, CEO of SMplanet, said, "As technology advances, our lives are becoming more convenient and enriched, but the people who are visually impaired still live with the limitations of technology, and they are shunned by technology. SMplanet is making efforts so that people who are socially and digitally vulnerable can no longer be alienated from technology and make them stand strong in the information-oriented society.”
Since there is no smartphone exclusively made for the people who are visually impaired, they gave up using the smartphone or use only a part of the smartphone function only with voice commands. Using a smartphone using voice commands has brought about a great change in the use of smartphones by the people who are visually impaired, but not all functions can be used with voice, and there are also limitations. For an example, it is necessary to shout out loud private information such as account numbers and text messages from outside. SMplanet said, "To solve this limitation, we developed a smartphone solution exclusively for the people who are visually impaired."
If user installs SMplanet's software, user can use smartphone UX and UI optimized for the people who are visually impaired. The company explains that through this, the people who are visually impaired can easily and freely use all functions provided by smartphones, such as online news and shopping, as well as sending text messages directly without help from others.
The principle is like this. If the smartphone solution for the people who are visually impaired is installed and the tactile perception sheet is attached to the smartphone screen, the people who are visually impaired can control all functions of the smartphone with the soft keypad in the solution by touching the touch-type screen.
In order to optimize the smartphone screen with many complex images for the people who are visually impaired, all images and icons on the smartphone screen are automatically converted into text, and only necessary contents are extracted from unstructured data, and unnecessary advertisements and menus are removed to only show important information to the users. In particular, by arranging all screens vertically, it is possible to control the smartphone with the direction keys by up and down, and for the people who are visually impaired who are accustomed to using a flip smartphone, the application (app) is controlled with the number keypad, optimizing the mobile accessibility of the people who are visually impaired.
Their product is developed for the people who are visually impaired all over the world, and it is a product simplifies smartphone use with intuitive UX/UI and voice guidance, targeting not only the visually impaired but also the elderly people who have difficulty using smartphones as potential consumers. It is estimated that there are about 260,000 registered blind people in Korea. As of 2020, there are about 1.1 billion people with visual impairments in the world, and 43 million are completely blind. In addition, due to an aging society and lifestyle changes, the number of people who are visually impaired is expected to increase to about 1.8 billion by 2050, and the number of completely blind people is expected to increase to 61 million. SMplanet plans to export about 5,000 smartphones to China and about 2,000 smartphones to Ghana for the people who are visually impaired based on the letter of intent signed with China and Ghana.
The company's motivation for applying the ‘Close-to-Life Contact-Free Leading Service Project’ is to increase information accessibility for the people who are visually impaired according to the spread of contact-free culture. CEO Hyun-sun Cho said, "In the process of converting offline services to contact-free services after COVID-19, all contact-free services were focused only on people without any disabilities, so digitally vulnerable groups such as the people who are visually impaired could not use contact-free services. We applied for this project because it was necessary to develop a customized screen structure that people who are visually impaired can use conveniently and an AI engine that can extract and expose only essential key information.” Currently, the company's smartphone solution exclusively for the people who are visually impaired uses crawling technology, so all various tags on the page must be individually crawled. In order to increase the number of platforms provided, it takes many hours to develop according to each platform, and this project is becoming a great help.
According to SMplanet, there is a basic function of Samsung mobile phones, 'Talkback' service, which is widely known as a technology for the people who are visually impaired. 'Talkback' can be used by designating a specific gesture or multi-touch in consideration of the use environment of the people who are visually impaired. However, it takes a long time to learn because users have to use specific gestures, unlike how to use a regular smartphone. In addition, it is difficult for the people who are visually impaired to press the same button again when they release their hand from the button they just pressed. Images without text are read only as ‘image’, so the core information written in the image is not delivered to the people who are visually impaired. In addition, since it provides the same UX and UI as a regular smartphone, when executing a desired action, it is confusing to know where to press and to execute it through several routes.
On the other hand, SMplanet's smartphone for the people who are visually impaired is composed of only the top and bottom, so it is easy to operate. The company said there is no missing information because it provides key information to the user after extracting the text in the image. In addition, since it can be operated with a shortcut key, the desired operation can be easily performed, providing high mobile accessibility to the people who are visually impaired.
SMplanet's sales have been on the rise for the past three years. They are also steadily carrying out research and development (R&D) and government support projects. In addition, they have also received orders for overseas purchases worth 7 billion KRW for smartphones for the people who are visually impaired. Through OHMYCOMPANY, they succeeded in funding up to the second round of encore investment, and are currently conducting the third round of encore funding. They received the letter of intent to purchase from China and Ghana, and they are first target markets to gradually expand overseas markets. They are also preparing to hold a business briefing session in Uzbekistan through the ICT Business Partners project.
They also hold many related patents. They also applied patents including, 'Portable terminal providing a virtual keypad for the people who are visually impaired (Application No.: 10-2021-0012496)', 'Tactile perception sheet for the people who are visually impaired and a portable terminal using the sheet (Application No.: 10-2019-0092386)', and 'Method and device for converting the voice of the people who are visually impaired into text and sign language (Application No.: 10-2022-0003309)'.
SMplanet is currently raising sales in two ways, through telecommunications companies and platform. They provide free smartphone solutions exclusively for the people who are visually impaired to customers, and they carry out opening services and shipments through the in-house call center. The customers, the people who are visually impaired, do not have to pay for hardware and only pays for communication expense every month. SMplanet receives a fee per user from telecommunications companies. In addition, through collaboration with a platform that is added to a smartphone for the people who are visually impaired, additional sales are raised through entry fees or sales shares.
In particular, they operate the only smartphone consultation call center for the people who are visually impaired in Korea, and directly proceed with mobile phone activation services, subscriptions, and shipments. It is not only for sales, but also solves the difficulties experienced during use.
There is a business partner that SMplanet would like to meet in order to expand their business. It is a foreign smartphone maker like Nokia. This is because there is one smartphone manufacturer in Korea in the form of a monopoly, so there are many cases where there is a great disadvantage during negotiations or in some cases, negotiations cannot even proceed. CEO Hyun-sun Cho said, “We would like to meet with overseas manufacturers to discuss the production of MVP (Minimum Viable Products) and manufacturing with a small MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity) as part of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) or ESG (Environmental Social Governance) management.”
SMplanet has been able to provide more diverse contents to the people who are visually impaired by participating in the ‘Close-to-Life Contact-Free Leading Service Project’. In addition, it served as an opportunity to change the direction of business from focusing only on domestic demand to overseas exports, and achieved an export contract of about 15,000 units next year.
When asked about the vision for the future, CEO Hyun-sun Cho said, “The current biggest goal is to officially launch a smartphone solution exclusively for the people who are visually impaired by completing the development of core information extraction AI. If the launch is successful, it will be possible to expand the variety of smartphone models, broadening the range of smartphone choices for the people who are visually impaired. We will expand the number of stores through continuous business partnerships so that the people who are visually impaired can use more platforms and services more conveniently.”
Media Contact
Company Name: SM PLANET
Contact Person: NS Cho
Email: Send Email
Phone: +82.1688-2598
City: Seoul
Country: Korea
Website: https://www.smplanet.co.kr/
