South Korea clears iPhone for sale
By Chris Ziegler 
posted September 23rd 2009 12:59AM
posted September 23rd 2009 12:59AM
What, you didn't know you couldn't buy the iPhone from at least one carrier in all 193 widely-recognized sovereign nations of the world? It's true; one need look no further than South Korea, one of the most technologically-advanced wireless societies, where much of the growth over the past several years has occurred in a self-imposed bubble thanks to the existence of policies requiring the presence of a custom software layer for connecting to data services -- a layer that gave local players like Samsung and LG an almost impenetrable advantage over foreign competition. Local authorities have been loosening those restrictions in recent months, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting this evening that they've just signed off on a waiver that would allow the iPhone to be sold despite a "technical ban" that had been keeping it off shelves. Local carrier KT had been saying for a while that it intended to carry the phone, so this step seems like little more than a formality -- but in a market accustomed to T-DMB tuners, limitless color choices, and wide VGA AMOLED displays, it'll be interesting to see whether there's profit to be had.
Expect more than 50 comments simply because the article has the word "iPhone" in it
Well, it was going to be 49...
(Note to the future potential 51st commenter: I hate you.)
Oh, there will be profits to be had. It's a pretty slick little device and most tech savvy folk like its features. Only a small amount feel the need to jailbreak it.
And for those few who want or need to jailbreak it are probably already buying cheaper (which I did,) or more feature-stacked phones.
You, sir, have obviously never Jailbroken one. Or installed the right software if you did. (SBSettings, Backgrounder, Kirkare, Winterboard, Lock info, GV-Mobile, SSH, Insomnia, Tethering, MMS, ...so much more)
Aaahhh.... Need I say more?
I think I would have probably tossed the iPhone by now if Jailbreaking didn't exits.... can I get an AMEN?
Andrey, well said!
Coming from Winmo and S60 to the iphone I was like, you can't do WHAT? Until jailbreak almost solved everything.
Dr. Chagas = someone who's never used a real smartphone. I kinda feel sorry for him, his ignorant bliss and all.
"no need to jailbreak"
haha
how quaint.
P.S.
Most "tech savvy folks" probably can't wait to Jailbreak their device, and wait for a month before upgrading to the new OS ver. so that a Jailbreak hal already been released. I'm sorry, but the difference between the iPhone and a Jailbroken iPhone is like a difference between a dumbphone and a smartphone.
@audrey
what's Kirkare?
Can't seem to find any nfo on it....
Sorry, it's Kirikae... If you're on 3.0 + look it up... you'll want to kiss me :)
(Quick App Switching/Killing for backgrounded apps).
N900 - and 3/4 of those will be complaints about how Engadget is an Apple fanboy site. I'm hoping that if KT does start distributing the iPhone that I'll be able to use my unlocked 3G on SK ala T-Mobile in the US. I would *love* to be able to recycle my little Samsung "feature phone" slider.
You know you could have hit the reply button right? Just saying...
Of course there will be profits to be had. It's a iPhone for crying out loud.
It's like asking if you can make a profit off water.
There are reasons to ask about the profit, especially for people from MS world. You see Zune and
XBox have been losing money for years. Apple, on the hand, is making gazillion!
iPhone shares continue to grow..
Growing and growing. And growing..
isn't korea only CDMA-2000? i believe it is.
would that refer to a possible CMDA iphone? verizon?
Both CDMA and W-CDMA networks are available in South Korea. SK Telecom, for example, operates one of each.
Korea is one of the countries with highest 3G service coverage and fastest 3G network.
KT, which has more than 10 million WCDMA subscribers, will be selling WCDMA iPhone 3GS, definitely.
Because S Korea is roughly the same size as Kentucky.
If I'm not able to use my 3G on SK, I'll break my contract and head on over to KT without thinking twice. Yes, the Samsung slider that I got for free has some cool features like video calling, but I don't use it and their internet portal, "Nate," is god-awful. Let me have my content the way I want it.
@boo - no. Before I had to leave AT&T for their hideous roaming policies, I was able to use my 3G over here with no problem. Just that SK wouldn't allow me to register their IMEI in their system.
What about DPRKT?
CDMA iPhone...
There will be small group of people that will buy this phone in Korea but I highly doubt it will have widespread success... Ipod had hard time over there also..
Doesn't Verizon have any device thing....??? One maybe able to bring it here and use on V or Sprint I guess...
Every time a student sees my iPhone they seem to fall in love with it. I think it will sell well here in Korea.
@jrtait - you may also notice how in general they so easily fall out of love with anything.. KT or SK or whoever that offers iPhone may have to offer different iterations of that phone every 3 to 6 months... (I'm sure you noticed how often LG or S changes their line up..) It will be a hit for a week or two then fall out of fashion like everything else there..
@halmo20 - that may be true for every incarnation of the iPod but the Touch. It's one of the most popular PMPs here and you can find it everywhere.
they love the ipod touchy... i bet they like the iphoney too
S Korea definitely has 3G. I was roaming with it on a 3G network while I was there. Did not resort to CDMA.
SK and Verizon have mutual roaming agreement. I almost got burnt by that when I took my Storm there and it automatically started to use data for email and stuff... It almost gave me heart attack and disabled data on the Storm... If you go to say LA Korea Town, cell phone shop owners there routinely (don't know how) enable phones from Korea on Verizon network...
I forgot that nobody was carrying the iPhone in Korea when I visited this summer...
Still, considering a lot of touch phones there are on par with the iPhone, I don't think Apple will see any major profits. I think the major reason why is because Korean telecom companies have oversaturated the market, and the only way they can profit nowadays is through ridiculous charges. They'll end up charging for all if not most apps, and they'll probably restrict app downloads to authorized ones. But this is just my 2 cents :-\
Oh, Apple WILL see profits alright. It's the carrier(s) that will be losing money left and right for the privilege of carrying iPhone.
According to the GSMA, both S. Korean carriers all comments are mentioning both operate 3G (GSM/WCDMA/UTMS whatever) 2100MHz networks, meaning the iPhone will, more than likely, be running in S. Korea unmodified as it supports the standard out of the box:
http://gsmworld.com/roaming/gsminfo/cou_kr.shtml
Blow your nose and get it out of your heads, fanboys, a CDMA / EVDO iPhone is a pipe dream for now.
Also worth mentioning that both SK and KT have roaming agreements with AT&T and T-Mobile in the USA.
WCDMA != CDMA
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WCDMA
That maybe true... But I heard that Apple already had CDMA iphone ready to go in SK since last year... Then the goverment took longer to get rid of wipi and was delayed... I still like to see iphone on V or Sprint.. it would be amusing to watch..
South Korea has everything both you can imagine and you can't imagine. I think iPhone might success if they provide many apps for South Korean likes.
What you guys are using right now in United State is what South Korean people used about 5 years ago.
However, since iPhone has a lot of possibilities, I can't wait to see~~!!!
Korea is cell and video game crazy, to be able to play PSP quality games on a cell phone + have an English/Korean dictionary on a large screen, these things will go like white on rice.
hahahahaha psp quality and a dictionary on large screen?
you mean a psp right?
For crying out loud, people! Where's your imagination? Every non-iPhone posts gets saturated with iPhone comments, and now here's an iPhone post... with hardly no insurgent non-iPhone responses? Allow me to start:
"But the Pre..."
"WinMo 6.5 and 7 will..."
"At least with Android..."
Got you started, now we need about 300+ more of those.
*sigh. WCDMA = UMTS, which is AT&T's 3G. It's the same damn thing.
WCDMA is not the same as CDMA/EVDO. In short, this is the same exact iPhone. There's no such thing as CDMA/EVDO iPhone.
@Eric:
The reason everyone's confused by this is that SKT and KTF both first had a CDMA network for their 2G and initially for 3G.
But, the Korean gov't opened up the 2.1GHz Band and said that only UMTS (=WCDMA/HSPA) could be used on this spectrum. Thus, SKT and KTF now have both EVDO AND UMTS.
What Chris didn't mention in his post is that all LBS (Location Based Services) on a Korean phone must be Korean-made. In other words, phones with LBS like Google Maps must drop this service on their phone or use a Korean LBS. That's a major reason why smartphones from foreign companies still have trouble bringing their phones to Korea; most companies have to remove their LBS feature on their phones before selling it here. Ex: RIM had to disable GPS on their Bold before it could be sold in Korea.)
Today, the Korean Communications Commission basically gave Apple the ok to sell their phone as is. (Btw, Apple's the first company to get this grant.) So, people will be able to use Google Maps or Find my iPhone in Korea and removed the last obstacle for KTF to sell the iPhone. That's a huge win for Apple because they won't need to modify much, if anything at all on their iPhone. This is also a win for a foreign company cause this is the first since exception to this rule. Hopefully this will open the door for other companies to enter the market and bring other nice phones here as well.
So, the next step is to wait for KTF to reveal pricing plans for the iPhone. Early rumors say that there will be 3 plans in a range from 40,000KRW~90,000KRW/month (roughly $33.49~$75.35 based on today's exchange rate)
I'm kinda worried about the retail price of the phones themselves, though. Korea typically charges insane prices for the phones themselves. To compare, the Bold's retail price is around 700,000KRW, or $586.76.
(Btw, I'm only picking on the Bold because there's not much else to compare with, in terms of foreign phones.)
Now I gotta figure out whether I'm going to break my contract and switch to KTF...
Foreign competition is almost always good for S Korea. Hyundai cars used to suck in quality until they foresaw the govt loosening the restrictions on Japanese imports. Then Hyundai got their act straight and look at their quality now... Tied for second.
Korean phones have always been good quality but because they come out with so many different models, so often, it seems that they are in such a hurry to package a phone and release it to the market, that it comes out as 'good' not 'great'.
I hope the prices decrease as well. I can't believe the debt that young people go into just to buy a mobile phone.
So... when will people actually be allowed to buy one? Or when will we be able to activate iphones on either network? I see articles everyday about how another obstacle has been cleared on the path to selling the iphone, but they might as well just put out headlines saying "we're close", "we really close", "no, we're really really close", "no, really, this time we're even closer". I didnt think it was possible to be more absurd than AT&T back in the states, and... well, I guess after I moved here I was proved wrong.
I'm sick of these articles, someone show me some real proof. By proof I mean let me walk into an SK telelcom or KTF store and have them activate my iPhone 3gs. No more of these stupid web rumors claiming a date. In June, people said "July, definitely". In July, people said, "August, we're sure of it". In August, people said, "It's seriously gonna happen in September."
Uh, if you're on their UMTS network, what are you doing waving your iPhone in their faces for? Bring in a cheap Samsung and move your USIM over after. And me? I'd be getting one of the many SKY phones instead were I in Korea; the iPhone frustrated me too much (touch sensor died after three months of use, browser constantly crashes even after updating, apps randomly crash, iTunes can't properly handle encoding for my non-English ID3 tags, I could go on and on).
jamar, you can't just move usim cards to the iphone or any other phones in korea. all the three korean mobile providers lock your usim to one imei number which means that if you put your usim into another mobile device, it won't work.
So can they tell what phone an IMEI belongs to? Black out the IMEI behind the battery and fill in with the iPhone's. But jeez, even Japan's more free than that.
@jamar. No, it really is THAT restrictive. Consumers here dont actually have access to the IMEI number of the phones we buy. The company knows them, and all that's behind the battery is their own proprietary serial number, which they relay to the HQ where they manage your IMEI and crap. It's not printed on the box, in the manual, behind the battery... etc. You never get to know what it is. Typing *#06# doesnt do anything either.
So... Korea creates a whitelist of IMEIs, consumers have absolutely no idea what their IMEIs are, and we cant register a foreign IMEI into the system. It's a perfectly locked down system.
TRON!!
waitaminute...
The two major mobile networks (SKT & KT) in SoKo supports WCDMA (GSM 3G).
Just to make it easier to understand,
SK Telecom, Korea Telecom = Optus, Telstra, Vodafone, AT&T, T-Mobile
LG Telecom = Verizon (CDMA only)
Does anyone really care about the iPhone anymore? It's all a bit last summer.
wow this is nice