Katie MarsalAccording to The Korea Herald, customers in South Korea showed significant demand for the iPhone 4 when it went on sale via KT's website and at its 2,900 shops nationwide. The phone went on sale at 6 a.m. and sold 100,000 by 1 p.m. local time, eventually reaching 130,000, 13 hours after preorders began.
The numbers are a significant increase from last December, when the iPhone 3GS sold 60,000 units at launch. The iPhone 4 is set to launch in Kora sometime in September.
Demand for the iPhone 4 was so strong in South Korea that KT had to expand the server for its website. The site was crashing throughout the day as customers attempted to preorder Apple's latest handset. KT is the second-largest carrier in the country.
South Korea's preorder troubles are not unique — carrier AT&T experienced similar difficulties in June, when customers could first place their order for the iPhone 4. Demand for Apple's newest smartphone was ten times higher on opening day than it was for its predecessor, the iPhone 3GS.
Apple later announced that more than 600,000 preorders were achieved on the first day of iPhone 4 sales. The handset launched in June in the U.S., France, Germany, the U.K. and Japan. Apple plans to quickly ramp up the iPhone 4 international launch to 87 total countries by September, its fastest-ever global deployment of a new handset.
Malcolm Owen
Mike Wuerthele and Malcolm Owen
Amber Neely
Andrew Orr
William Gallagher
Sponsored Content
44 Comments
Only 130K!?
Apple is Doomed!?
Not too bad for a "flawed" phone with a "defective design".
Always love to hear news that throws mud in the faces of trolls and critics.
I enjoy using my iP4 every single day.
...it would be a hit there. South Koreans are a very sophisticated, gregarious, tech-savvy society. I should know, I was stationed in Korea for a year. One only needs to step down at their award winning, ultra-modern Incheon International Airport near Seoul to know what I'm talking about.
Spell check, Katie. Spell check!
...it would be a hit there. South Koreans are a very sophisticated, gregarious, tech-savvy society. I should know, I was stationed in Korea for a year. One only needs to step down at their award winning, ultra-modern Incheon International Airport in Seoul to know what I'm talking about.
Actually, I find Incheon Airport to be very cold and impersonal; but that's an aside. I agree with your first point that Koreans are very tech-savvy. What makes the number of pre-orders more incredible though is that Apple is competing against SK (Korea's largest telecom provider) and Samsung (One of Korea's largest and most respected companies) with the Samsung Galaxy S. SK have been flogging the Galaxy S with deals that include bringing your old iPhone in for a rebate on the Galaxy S. Apple is also competing against the Korean mindset that says if it's not made in Korea it's not good; though that mindset is now changing.
As a final point the iPhone pre-orders in Korea were higher per-capita than in the US. Apple would do well to make Korea one of its first tier countries.