• Authors: Joonkoo Lee & Hyun-Chin Lim
• Publication Date: August / 2018
• Publisher: SNUPRESS

This study pays attention to mobile transformation in Asia and the way it shapes a rising transnational Asia and its organizational and institutional forms of interconnection and interaction. How has Asia become so central in the global mobile telecom industry? How has mobile telecom changed national economies and the way they are connected with each other and to a broader global economy? How do the ways they are integrated to mobile telecom global value chains and international trade networks converge and diverge? How has the rise of mobile usage affected societies in Asia? More broadly, what do all these speak to the present and the future of Asian capitalism(s)?

The rise of Asia is significantly attributed to internal and external connections that the region has developed through global and regional production networks. A dense web of inter-firm networks plays a key role in deepening regional integration but also in advancing the region’s position in the mobile phone GVC. This study provides a valuable assessment of how Asia as a whole has emerged as a key player in the global mobile telecom industry, how Asian countries are integrated to global and regional value chains similarly and differently, and how the convergent and divergent development paths and firms’ business strategies have affected the growth and upgrading trajectories of Asian economies and firms in the global mobile telecom industry.