SK Telecom said Thursday that it will target the global smart-learning market together with U.S.-based global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

The two firms signed an agreement at SKT’s headquarters in downtown Seoul on the same day to jointly launch the smart-learning project.

The event took place as the country’s telecom giant seeks a future growth engine to target the overseas market, much bigger in size than the increasingly saturated Korean market.

As a start, SKT previously introduced an education platform for tablet PCs with Chungdahm Learning in July last year, calling it “T Smart Learning.”

The two companies agreed to use their information communication technology as well as educational content to launch their educational content platform business in October, said SKT officials.

According to the plan, HMH’s educational content will be available for download on SKT’s already-existing smart-learning platform in October. Then the two companies will take a step further to develop another joint platform by next year, separate from the one SKT built with Chungdahm Learning.

“With the new platform, Korean students will be able to study math and English simultaneously because the platform will be set up in English,” an SKT official said, indicating that the company will be taking a two-platform strategy in smart learning.

The all-in-English platform will enable the firm to export it to other countries like China and India, which is why it could be deemed a vessel for future growth, the official said.

HMH, which is the biggest educational solution provider in the U.S., provides content such as Destination Reading, Skill Tutor Reading and Grammar Snap for English education as well as Destination Math, Go Math and Science Fusion.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)