AfterDawn: News

60,000 iPhones sold in Korea on first day

South Korea, the latest nation to begin offering the Apple iPhone, has seen about 60,000 units sold on launch day, a far cry from the 1 million sold in the US for the iPhone 3GS but a large bump from the estimated 5000 sold in the first week in China.

The phone is available through carrier KT Corp, and Korea has one of the largest mobile phone subscriber bases in Asia.



"We're hoping that this iPhone will be a trigger point for the smartphone market in Korea," says Yang Hyun-mi, KT's chief strategy officer. Hyun-mi also offered that smartphones only control 1 percent of the mobile market in the nation.

Korean-based Samsung and LG dominate the market but have stayed away from smartphones due to government regulations.

Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 30 Nov 2009 13:32

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• slickwill

  Quote:South Korea, the latest nation to begin offering the Apple iPhone, has seen about 60,000 units sold on launch day, a far cry from the 1 million sold in the US for the iPhone 3GS but a large bump from the estimated 5000 sold in the first week in China. According to the U.S. census, the U.S. Population is 308,055,295 and the population of South Korea is 49,540,000 according to Wiki. So South Korea's population is about 1/6 of the U.S. which means the number of iPhones.........I think you guys get the picture. Basically, the opening paragraph is saying the sales numbers or low compared to the U.S., but if they compare it to the actual population of the country, it's pretty astounding.

  30.11.2009 16:27 #1

• DVDBack23

  Quote:Quote:South Korea, the latest nation to begin offering the Apple iPhone, has seen about 60,000 units sold on launch day, a far cry from the 1 million sold in the US for the iPhone 3GS but a large bump from the estimated 5000 sold in the first week in China. According to the U.S. census, the U.S. Population is 308,055,295 and the population of South Korea is 49,540,000 according to Wiki. So South Korea's population is about 1/6 of the U.S. which means the number of iPhones.........I think you guys get the picture. Basically, the opening paragraph is saying the sales numbers or low compared to the U.S., but if they compare it to the actual population of the country, it's pretty astounding.Do the math. If South Korea has 1/6th the population, then to be comparable, they would have had to sell 1/6 the iPhones correct? 1,000,000 / 6 = 166,666. Therefore, Korea's sales were great, yes, but not comparable to US iPhone 3GS sales. You also have to factor in that there are multiple carriers in each nation...

  30.11.2009 16:57 #2

• cyprusrom

  If you do that kind of comparison, I think you need to include more variables, like population age groups(among others). You can't make a 1:1 comparison if the samples are not similar.

  30.11.2009 18:25 #3

• KillerBug

  China - 1,334,430,000 people, 5,000 iPhones, one iPhone for every 266,886 people
  USA - 308,056,000 people, 1,000,000 iPhones, one iPhone for every 308 people
  South Korea - 48,333,000 people, 60,000 iPhones, one iPhone for every 805 people
  
  Of course, the Chinese version never had a chance...there were already far better "hacked" versions of the iPhone available for a much lower price once it was finaly released.

  30.11.2009 23:37 #4

• seoul_man

  it might make sense for someone to actually verify what you choose to print on your website, since the accurate numbers are that a total of 60,000 total iphones have been ordered in the past "week" not "opening day".
  
  the first day that we could order the iphone, roughly 15,000 iphones were ordered and quickly to rose to 50,000 within the first 3-4 days. however, since then, the sales numbers have dramatically slowed down.

  1.12.2009 00:41 #5