The Korea Times' Kim Tae-gyu reports that wireless search functionality is exploding in popularity. "According to [Korea's] three mobile telephony service providers, the number of people who connected to the Internet with handsets topped 20 million last month," Kim writes.

"Currently, about 8 percent out of our 20 million subscribers use the cell phone as a search tool," says SK Telecom's Yang Yoon-seon. "The rate will be sure to rise if mobile searches include content of the landline Internet down the road via our hook-up with Google."

SK Telecom is working with Google to develop a next-generation search engine designed for Korean mobile users. "The search engine that will canvass both the landline and mobile internet will be unveiled next month by Google and us," Yang says. "Then people will enjoy search results on cell phones with desktop quality, although graphics, which don't come out very well on the small form visual displays of a phone, will be excluded."