“Apple’s newest smartphone, the iPhone 5, became available in Korea as of midnight on Thursday, almost three months after it was first released overseas,” The Chosun Ilbo reports.
“Mobile providers such as SK Telecom and KT, which had been taking pre-orders online for the past week, held massive launch events to attract subscribers,” The Chosun Ilbo reports. “‘Online pre-orders ended just two hours after we received reservations on Dec. 1, as we immediately racked up 50,000 requests,’ an SK executive staffer said. KT has attracted more subscribers, with a whopping 250,000 pre-orders.”
The Chosun Ilbo reports, “The number of iPhone 5 subscribers [in South Korea] will reach up to 2 million by the end of this month, industry sources speculate.”
Read more in the full article here.
“Despite the below-zero temperatures and light snow, subscribers eagerly queued for the event, chatting with other iPhone fans while drinking coffee and munching on sandwiches provided by the No. 2 mobile carrier,” Lee Minji and Kim You Jin report for Yonhap.
“KT said earlier that pre-orders for the iPhone 5 in the first two hours topped the record the iPhone 4S logged on its first day of pre-orders in November 2011,” Lee and Kim report. “‘The arrival of the iPhone 5 will give both KT and SKT a distinct advantage over the third major mobile operator in Korea, LG Uplus, whose LTE service has successfully lured customers from KT and SKT,’ Moody’s Investors Service analyst Serena Won wrote in a note.”
Lee and Kim report, “As of October, iPhone users claimed roughly 11 percent of the country’s 31.4 million smartphone population, according to the note.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s having a party right smack dab in Samsungorea’s front yard. Enjoy the view, thieves.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Jake” for the heads up.]