14 DAY TRIAL // South Korean mobile phone users might be fond of their local handset vendors, but it seems that the popularity of devices coming from abroad extends to the market in this country too, and that the new iPhone 4 model is set to prove one of the most popular devices in South Korea.
The Apple iPhone 4 was made available for pre-order in the country last week, and local distributor KT Corp., which has it exclusively on this market, says that it already registered over 200,000 pre-orders for it.
According to KT, South Korea second largest mobile carrier, it reached this milestone on Tuesday at 8 a.m., after kicking off the reservations for this device last Wednesday.
Interestingly enough, it seems that the rate at which South Koreans pre-order the Apple handset has slowed down a lot.
During the first day of pre-order availability, a number of more than 130k users rushed to reserve one unit for the official launch, but only about 70k other people did the same during the past six days.
It seems that the wireless carrier plans on closing the first round of pre-orders at midnight Tuesday, while reservations at its stores would be opened until 6 p.m. Wednesday.
According to a recent article on yonhapnews, the iPhone 4 reservations should resume in a matter of days, before the device starts shipping next month.
Unfortunately, no specific details on when the iPhone 4 would become available on shelves were unveiled for the time being.
The new Apple device is set to prove an even more popular device than its predecessor on the market did, namely the iPhone 3GS, which registered 65,000 pre-orders in the first five days and which was sold in 850,000 units in over eight months of availability.
However, the iPhone 4 would still have to face some powerful rivals on the South Korean market, including the Android-based Samsung Galaxy S, which was sold in over 800k units in about 55 days, being the fastest selling device in the country.
As for those who pre-ordered the iPhone 4, 67 percent were male, while 33 were female, KT unveiled. 85 percent of them were in their 20s and 30s, the carrier added, according to yonhapnews.