SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, “SKT”) announced its collaboration with CelcomDigi Berhad, Malaysia’s largest telecommunications company in Malaysia, Agate, a leading game developer and publisher in Indonesia, and Cosmic Technologies, a leading IoT platform provider and consumer electronics and mobile devices supplying company in the Philippines, to create mutually beneficial business opportunities through publishing partnerships for SKT’s metaverse platform, ifland.

SKT will focus on areas that apply to all global versions of ifland, such as service planning and operation and content creation, and its partners will carry out activities to boost ifland in their local markets through localized content and marketing, and primary customer support. For this initiative, SKT recently signed MoUs with Agate and Cosmic Technologies, and will further expand its partnership with CelcomDigi, which began in February 2023.

SKT expects the partnerships to bring mutual benefits: The partners will be able to gain experience in the metaverse service/business without making initial investments for service development, and SKT will be able to offer content tailored to each country or region in a timely manner and conduct effective localized marketing via its partners.

SKT said the companies began discussing cooperation from the beginning of this year. Since July, they have been conducting tests for service localization, which includes joint marketing activities as well as local events held by the partner companies at their ‘if home’ created within ifland.

Moreover, to better support its partners and expand further into the global metaverse market, SKT is currently working to add Indonesian, Malay, Hindi and Spanish to the list of languages supported by ifland; develop a curation feature that recommends content based on customer characteristics and region of access; and improve the overall global service quality.

Going forward, the company will provide more administrator rights to its partners to vitalize the use of ifland in each different region, and in the long run, it will seek partners in the U.S., India and Europe to accelerate the global expansion of ifland.

SKT began expanding ifland to the global market by launching the service in 49 countries in November 2022. Since then, it has been making diverse efforts to increase ifland’s global presence by discovering a wide range of attractive content and features for global users, such as virtual meetups with K-pop stars.

“By signing agreements with three leading IT companies in Southeast Asia, we will be able to carry out customized marketing in these countries,” said Yang Maeng-seog, Vice President and Head of Metaverse CO at SKT. “We will continue to do our best to provide ifland users with content and services that understand their culture and society by partnering with more local companies.”