SK Telecom , South Korea''s top mobile carrier, said on Monday that it had launched a mobile advertising platform, "T ad". With this the company joins the race with  Google and Apple.

The country's smartphone penetration is set to jump to 42 percent this year from just 2 percent two years ago, fueled by the soaring popularity of Apple Inc.'s iPhone and Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S.

SK Telecom, which controls around half of the country's mobile market, will draw on its application store and large smartphone subscriber base to provide mobile advertising solutions for smartphone applications and other media such as internet-based TVs, it said.

It plans to expand its service from its own application store to others such as Google Inc.'s Android market and Apple's AppStore.

SK Telecom said the platform will give developers 60 percent of the revenue derived from applications.