iPhone Launching Big in South Korea

1st.

SK is Samsung territory.

Imagine the speeds that they're getting over there...

Oh God one can dream....

Just for the hell of it, I would go to Korea just to experience their internet and wireless networks.

Probably they have very fast HSDPA there. At first I thought South Korea exclusively uses CDMA2000.

As an American living and teaching here in SK it's interesting to see how locked in the cell phone industry is. The internet here is blazingly fast and awesome, but the cell phone industry is more like a cartel than a competition. It'll be nice to see the iPhone actually making waves against the other outrageously priced smart-phones here.

Unfortunately, many foreigners here such as myself are finding it next to impossible to actually get an iPhone, as the telecom that is providing it (KT/Show) is notoriously unfriendly toward giving foreigners cell phones at all. A local phone shop actually told me 'not for foreigners'.

*sigh*

As an American living and teaching here in SK it's interesting to see how locked in the cell phone industry is. The internet here is blazingly fast and awesome, but the cell phone industry is more like a cartel than a competition. It'll be nice to see the iPhone actually making waves against the other outrageously priced smart-phones here.

Unfortunately, many foreigners here such as myself are finding it next to impossible to actually get an iPhone, as the telecom that is providing it (KT/Show) is notoriously unfriendly toward giving foreigners cell phones at all. A local phone shop actually told me 'not for foreigners'.

*sigh*

That's not right. Wowww, I would be so pissed! Go talk to a manager or something

As an American living and teaching here in SK it's interesting to see how locked in the cell phone industry is. The internet here is blazingly fast and awesome, but the cell phone industry is more like a cartel than a competition. It'll be nice to see the iPhone actually making waves against the other outrageously priced smart-phones here.

Unfortunately, many foreigners here such as myself are finding it next to impossible to actually get an iPhone, as the telecom that is providing it (KT/Show) is notoriously unfriendly toward giving foreigners cell phones at all. A local phone shop actually told me 'not for foreigners'.

*sigh*

Do you think it will be as popular as this article suggests? Note that Chinese Unicom iPhone had a huge pre-order followed by about 5k sales due to the removable of WiFi and high price compared to grey market sales.

S. Korea is different since there is no viable grey market due to the IMEI lock down. On top of that, only 400k with smartphones seems very low for a country with 47M and a reportedly fast and well covered mobile network.

As an American living and teaching here in SK it's interesting to see how locked in the cell phone industry is. The internet here is blazingly fast and awesome, but the cell phone industry is more like a cartel than a competition. It'll be nice to see the iPhone actually making waves against the other outrageously priced smart-phones here.

Unfortunately, many foreigners here such as myself are finding it next to impossible to actually get an iPhone, as the telecom that is providing it (KT/Show) is notoriously unfriendly toward giving foreigners cell phones at all. A local phone shop actually told me 'not for foreigners'.

*sigh*

If you're a teacher there, I'm guessing you're on an E-2 Visa, which means you can get a cell phone from any carriers (including Show, SKT and LGtelecom(OZ)) if you pay a deposit. You can even have two lines, too.
Most foreigner friends of mine don't want to pay the damn deposit, but it doesn't mean you cannot get a phone.

Especially for LGtelecom, they don't even require deposit if it's your first line of cell phones. And activation takes less than 10 minutes.

As a foreigner myself, I own a line from Show and one from SKT, and have been using my iPhone 3GS on Show network for almost 3 months now after getting it approved by KFCC privately. And it's been an extremely satisfying experience.

I think you haven't been to a phone shop in a year or two, or you've just met a very bad dealership and have had bad experiences from them :(

Anyways, back on topic, they have just finished (or almost finished) the iPhone launch event at the Olympics Stadium, activating 1,000 iPhones instantly today, and the rest of the people who have pre-ordered will get their activated phones by the first week of december.

But to note, there were already over 300 people who have used iPhone on Show or SKT carriers, by getting their phones approved by the Korean FCC thingy... including me.

And the reason why Korean smartphone shares are so low, is that Korean cell phones can already do most of the office editing, mobile banking, pay for the bus, pay for your drinks at the local convenience store, watch TV ANYWHERE (including subways :)) and more...
Smartphones are the ones that are actually lacking some of the mobile banking stuff and good mobile internet because most Korean gov't and bank websites don't support Mobile IE and such.

And since Samsung just announced the price drop on the T*OMNIA2: AMOLED version, and Blackberry pushing their Bold harder than ever, I think this whole smartphone war is going to be interesting :)

Do you think it will be as popular as this article suggests? Note that Chinese Unicom iPhone had a huge pre-order followed by about 5k sales due to the removable of WiFi and high price compared to grey market sales.

S. Korea is different since there is no viable grey market due to the IMEI lock down. On top of that, only 400k with smartphones seems very low for a country with 47M and a reportedly fast and well covered mobile network.

It really depends on your level of expectation.

If people expect that the Koreans and the Japanese to have the same number of iphones per capita as the US, then they will be disappointed.

It really depends on your level of expectation.

If people expect that the Koreans and the Japanese to have the same number of iphones per capita as the US, then they will be disappointed.

My post clear questioned the number of sales compared to the number of pre-orders and made mention of the very low smartphone numbers compared to their total number of cell phones in use. I made no mention of per capita sales or comparison to other countries.