By Min-Jeong Lee
Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5 is invading South Korea, the home market of rival Samsung Electronics , and early numbers suggest a warm welcome.
Sales of Apple’s latest smartphone model are set to take off Friday in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Samsung phones: only 11% or 3.4 million of South Korea’s 31.4 million smartphone users carried iPhones as of October, according to Moody's Credit Outlook.
Customer interest for the iPhone 5 is “better than expected” thus far, said Irene Kim, a spokeswoman for SK Telecom . The 50,000 units that South Korea’s top telecom operator had allotted for online pre-orders were fully booked in about two hours last Friday, Ms. Kim said.
KT Corp. , which hasn’t put a cap on the number of online pre-orders, said it received more than 130,000 applications during the same period.
“The launch of iPhone 5 here will, of course, increase the market share for the iPhone series,” said HI Investment & Securities tech analyst Song Myung-sup.
But besting Samsung’s market share in South Korea could be an uphill battle for Apple, analysts say. Apple declined to comment on its market share in South Korea, and a spokesman for Samsung Electronics also declined to comment.
A large number of Korean smartphone users have not yet switched to long-term evolution or 4G wireless service platforms, presenting an attractive opportunity for SK Telecom and KT to gain subscribers, Serena Won, an associate analyst with Moody’s Credit Outlook, wrote in a research note.
Both the iPhone 5 and Samsung’s Galaxy S III can operate on LTE networks.
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