Lack of innovation hurts Naver’s search grip

With the increasing popularity of smartphones, such as the Apple iPhone, the Web is increasingly moving toward mobile users, and Internet companies are scrambling to rethink their business models and adapt to their changing attitudes and consumption behavior. The latter’s response to Naver, the country’s most popular website and leading search engine, has so far been underwhelming. / Korea Times

By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff reporter

Naver (www.naver.com) has dominated the Korean search market like a fat kid does a cookie jar. However, as the website's presence is taking an abrupt dip, it's worth questioning whether the seeds of defeat were sown at the height of success, as the obsession toward prolonging old business models appears to have made Naver predictable and boring.

Perhaps, Naver could blame Apple for exposing its lost ability to innovate. 

Since its belated Korean debut in November last year, the iPhone, Apple's do-it-all smartphone, has obviously been on a run in the gadget market, singlehandedly igniting what had been a muted mobile Internet explosion.