SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) today announced that its advanced indoor location-based service (LBS) platform ‘Wizturn’ is bringing innovative changes to the O2O market by enabling the development and launch of ‘WingK,’ a new type of indoor-based service  for Korea’s largest bookstore chain Kyobo Book Center.

Wizturn (www.wizturnhub.com) is SK Telecom’s home-grown beacon-based indoor LBS platform that enables businesses to easily develop a wide range of indoor location-based services customized to their needs. It is increasingly being highlighted as a solution for large-scale businesses such as hospitals, exhibition halls, shopping malls and sports stadiums to offer differentiated services - including auto check in, map, indoor navigation, SNS and smart offers - to enhance customer convenience. Wizturn has been so far applied to home stadiums of SK Knights (professional basketball team) and SK Wyverns (professional baseball team) to offer their fans with diverse smart location-based services, as well as to Seoul National University Bundang Hospital in 2013 to mainly offer indoor navigation service for patients and visitors.

Launched today, WingK is built with attractive features to help the giant player carry out more effective O2O (Offline to Online) marketing to capture and retain customers. The service is first introduced to customers who visit Kyobo’s flagship store located in Gwanghwamun, central Seoul, and added to Kyobo’s existing mobile app to ensure convenience of use.

*WingK currently supports devices running Android 4.3 and higher. Customers can enjoy the service by either downloading the new Kyobo app or upgrading the app. Plans are underway to enable the service for users of iPhone supporting iOs 7 or higher.

Realized through over 60 BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) beacons installed within the bookstore, WingK detects the accurate location of customers in real-time and sends notifications containing special offers, coupons, event information and much more. For instance, WingK will automatically check-in customers when they physically enter the store; and will send real-time push notifications containing different offers and messages depending on each customer’s location within the store.

“SK Telecom will continue to support diverse businesses that wish to develop O2O services of their own through our beacons and indoor positioning technologies, and work closely with them develop smart convergence services,” said Park Chol-soon, Senior Vice President and Head of Convergence Business Office at SK Telecom.

“With SK Telecom’s advanced indoor LBS platform, we were able to achieve remarkable upgrades to our mobile app,” said Kim Min-gi, Head of Marketing Group at Kyobo Book Center. “Building on this success, we will cooperate in more areas to create differentiated services for customers.”