iPhone Effect Begins in Korea…15,000 Units Pre-ordered on the First Day
While KT, the first distributor of Apple’s iPhone in Korea, officially announced the launch of the iPhone on Sunday and began accepting pre-orders through its online store, the sales of the iconic smartphone reached 15,000 units on the first day.
The number of iPhone pre-sale orders did not include other pre-sale orders through off-line stores, according to KT.
Compared to China, Korean subscribers have shown more interested in the iPhone. In China, Apple’s local carrier, China Unicom, secured only 5,000 new iPhone subscribers in the first four days of sales.
Unlike the Chinese market, KT offered more affordable subsidies, up to 814,000 won (US$705) with a 2-year contract and i-Premium service plan. Without the iPhone service plan, KT offered the phone with only 214,000 won (US$185) of subsidies with a 2-year service contract. The iPhone kept Wi-Fi connectivity while China Unicom does not provide this service from iPhone.
The suggested retail price of the 32-gigabyte iPhone 3GS is 946,000 won (US$819), and the 16GB iPhone 3GS is 814,000 won. KT has introduced the following three service plans for the iPhone: i-Light, i-Medium, and i-Premium. The monthly service fee of each service plan is 45,000 won(US$39), 65,000 won(US$56), and 95,000 won(US$82), respectively. In China, China Unicom has been selling the phones for $880 to $1,170 with a service plan
In the meantime, the launch of iPhone expects to change the local mobile phone market trend. Above all, the price of high-end mobile phones is expected to decrease. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, which combined control approximately 80 percent of the local market, may not avoid their pricing strategy. The ASP (average selling price) of Samsung mobile phones this year was US$113, down from US$135 in the global market. The ASP in the Korean market was US$320 up from US$268 last year. Even similar mobile phones, such as Samsung and LG, have set more expensive price tags in the local market due to limited competitive alternatives.
Until now, Korea was one of the major foreign mobile phone manufacturers. Among foreign makers, Motorola is leading with approximately 3 percent of the market share, while Nokia, Sony Ericsson, HTC, and Research in Motion recorded an insignificant market share.
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very good
Much better sales than I thought! I got mine pre-ordered
i’m excited about this, but waiting to purchase due to some minor concerns. i think for apple enthusiasts, which there are many, the iphone will sell very well.
also, being a culture where status is so heavily influenced, where a phone is considered a sign of your status, koreans will purchase for that reason over functionality.
however, i have a few concerns with the phone so i’m going to do a “wait and see” approach.
lack of dmb support is something that i think might hinder some koreans to purchase. this is a service that you see the majority of koreans utilize on the subways. is there anyway an app can be written for that?
also, the majority of korean websites seem to only play well with internet explorer and i’m told that ie can’t be installed on iphone. is this true? if so, this is a painful hurdle for the phone as i hate ie as a browser, but unfortunately need it for many basic features like online banking and shopping.
also, the data plan seems a bit whack. 65,000krw per month for data? i have a blackberry via sk telecom. it has it’s own set of issues and is far from the perfect phone in korea where it also lacks dmb, but the 15,000krw data plan per month is far cheaper. if i can’t access the important websites on the iphone, there is no way i’m committing myself to 65,000krw for the next 24 months.
if these concerns aren’t true, then i’ll be a proud owner of an iphone as well, so i’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Let’s see if I can’t help allay some of your concerns…
It does lack DMB… I have no idea if the Korean app store has anything to remedy this, so I totally agree that this will be a big turnoff for many Koreans.
Many Korean websites used to only work with IE. These days, I’m seeing many, many more sites being recoded to work with other web browsers (this from someone who’s been here for over 5 years). You only run into a real problem when you need to access anything that uses god-awful activeX (banking/paying with a credit card).
65,000 isn’t even the second cheapest option. I got the “i-slim” plan, which, for some reason, I don’t see advertised with the others… It’s only W35,000 per month. Sure, this means I have fever minutes(150)/texts/data, but that’s why I have wifi at home and at work. Install skype on your iphone, and you don’t really have to worry about making calls. Wifi will let you get all the data you need without chewing up your data allotment.
I’ve loved my ipod touch for the past 2 years that I’ve had it. I’m really excited that now I won’t have to carry around two devices anymore.
Sorry to double post…
I should also note, that the ActiveX controls used here in Korea for banking/buying probably don’t work properly on phones the have IE Mobile on them, either… I’ve tried to find information on this topic before, so I could be totally wrong, but I believe that windows based(coded) activex doesn’t work on Windows Mobile. Also, I read that Mobile doesn’t allow for the automatic download of said controls.
Can anyone confirm or deny this? I’m very curious whether or not I could do banking from a phone with this OS.
We have a good news.
To support smartphone-based mobile banking, Korean major banks to adopt new standard soon. I think it will work on non-ActiveX-based platform.
does anyone know what the pricing is like if you go over your data plan allowance? does the data simply shut off or can you have an option to not allow data transmission once you’ve hit your allowance?
i don’t think there is anyway i could use anything less than 1gig per month so the 65,000 won plan could work. however, i don’t want any crazy surprises if i happen to go over.
To be honest I don’t think it will do well in total sales because it lacks many basic functions we use and need in Korea. But you never know, if they make an app for everything that we use on our other Korean handsets then it will do very well in my opinion. We will just have to wait and see what happens. Time and sales will tell how well it does but in my opinion it won’t do well like it did in Japan.
I’m not sure but, I guess the extra data transmission will be charged 51 won per 1MB.
In my case, usually I’m using Wi-Fi, so I selected i-light.
All iPhone users (and other “i” packages) will get free access to the tens of thousands of KT Nespot APs around the country.