“South Korea’s three telecommunications companies are expected to again face punitive measures by communications regulators for allegedly providing subsidies over the legal limit for Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus,” Park Hyong-ki reports for The Korea Herald. “The new iPhone created a stir as soon as it hit Seoul last Friday, with die-hard Apple fans waiting in long lines in front of telecom retail stores in the wee hours to get their hands on the device.”
“SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus saw the new iPhone as an opportunity to shake things up in the telecom market in which the three companies struggled to attract new customers with Samsung Electronics’ Galaxy Note 4 or Galaxy S5,” Park reports. “Apple’s iPhones have not only changed the way people communicate, but have also boosted the value of the telecom industry following its standstill during the 2G communication era.”
“The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the Korea Communications Commission immediately summoned and warned executives of the three telecom companies over the weekend after discovering irregularities,” Park reports. “Under the new law on mobile handset subsidies, consumers cannot receive subsidies of more than about 340,000 won (S$405) for the iPhone 6 with a 16-gigabyte capacity. Some retailers have been found to give 500,000 won subsidies through various payment schemes both offline and online…. The ICT Ministry and the KCC said in a joint statement, ‘We will take follow-up measures by either imposing fines against telecom retailers or file a complaint with the prosecution after a thorough investigation.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We love it when desperation sets in.
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Government gets involved to fight foreign companies, intruding on home grown products, wish that’ll happen here.
Clearly you are right, quality products are affected by this law where cheaper options far less do or not at all, now who supplies those quality products without resorting to minimal profitability I wonder.
Be careful what you wish for. One of the root causes of the Great Depression was just this sort of tactic on a global scale.
Yes, not a bad thing to do to level out the playing field but…, who wants to buy the local crap anyway?
Koreans are very smart and savy people when choosing only the best device out there in the market.
Scamsung sent them the word to put the squeeze on.
This is what protectionism looks like. Trick question: Who is being harmed by the subsidies offered by carriers to their customers?
There is no actual ” subsidy”. (Look up the definition of the word if there is any doubt.) Rather, the phones are sold on an “installment plan” in which the full price is recouped over time. Don’t worry about the carriers; they will be sure to get their money!
Exactly. So this is nothing other than an attempt to put the kaboosh on iPhone sales in the home of it’s biggest (as in units “shipped”!) rival. This should be seen as a compliment to Apple that even the home country of said “biggest” rival is clearly rattled by the response to the iPhone. What could be more embarrassing to Samsung than to have Apple laying comfortably in their own bedroom?
They should just break out the phone purchase loan payments from the regular bill.
Customers always pay the full price, either immediately or over time. There is no subsidy. Telecoms charitably paying for customer phones? I think not.
Desperate samdung…
Get a life… U lost u immoral arrogant copycat!
Now i want to see some real pain for the biggest copycats .. Google and Erik Schit
…immediately summoned and warned executives of the three telecom companies over the weekend after discovering irregularities
Time for an enema to flush out the SamDung.
(Apologies, couldn’t help myself).
That’s a rather complex pun there, Derek. But I see it is also an insight into what might actually come to pass, in which case, your comment would be elevated to metaphor, however malodourous.
Wow government regulating how good of a deal the consumer can get, brilliant plan – who’s idea is that?