For all of you fellow Mac geeks in Korea salivating over the iPhone and its announcement that it will hit Asia, stop salivating. According to the tech specs at Apple the phone is GSM, a format that is all but technically impossible to use in Korea (which uses CDMA). If you want to get the thing, lets hope for a CDMA version as part of the Asia launch.
No iPhone for Korea
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The iPhone probably will not happen in Korea unless Samsung pushes for this but then I still do not think it will happen because there are too many players here, i.e., cellphone manufactures, government and Apple-Korea does not seem to be committed to promoting Apple here that much either. I do predict that the Mac OS will start gaining serious ground here as the botnet spam pandemic inspires the rest of the world to dump Windows and turn to more secure solutions to avoid virus and spam but Korea will turn to this only after the rest of the world does so first.
Korea is addicted to Microsoft. For all of the complaining that Microsoft monopolizes the market here, almost no one will use Macs. I’ve heard that oddly enough, Apple was more popular here years ago.
If the Apple phone really takes off its features will no doubt appear in CDMA-compatible versions from many companies down the road…
No iPhone in Korea is due to the fact that the Korean networks are all CDMA, not GSM — the global standard. How I wish there was a GSM network provider here in Korea. Should Apple be required to tailor everything worldwide to fit Korea’s peculiar circumstances?
I thought Korea had started installing GSM networks? I hard that some Treo’s could now be used in parts of Korea and Japan.
I don’t think Korea is requiring or asking Apple to do anything in Korea or worldwide, Brendon, but if you want to sell phones in a country you have to meet its specs, no? It seems obvious that if Apple is interested in Korean sales it must release a CDMA version, or forfeit the market. It’s up to companies to adjust to the marketplace, not the other way ’round.
Well, to the extent that Korea chooses technical standards completely different from the rest of the world (and it most decidedly does), that is what is known as “non-tariff trade barrier”. Is it an accident that Nokia and Ericsson can’t seem to sell their mobile phones here in Korea? ‘Cause they do sell CDMA phones in large quantities elsewhere, you know, on top of the GSM phones they shift in large quantities.
The Apple phone, when available for CDMA, will be a category killer here in Korea. $499 plus tax yields a price of W570,000 — and that matches high-end “smart phones” from Korean manufacturers. But with CDMA constituting a small fraction of worldwide phone users, who can blame Apple for attacking the GSM market first?
Apple Korea, by the way, did better in 2006 than ever before. They’re trying plenty and good things are coming.
iPhone? We’re still waiting for Blackberries.
Macs are NOT more secure re: viruses and such. Virus writers just don’t bother with Macs because then what would be the point? To wreak havok on 4% of computers worldwide? They hit Windows because it causes the most damage. If Macs ever became more popular than Windows, that would change, and viruses would be just as much a problem for the Mac users.
Macs are indeed more secure — chief among the advantages of the Mac are the fact that no user ever runs as “root”, thereby limiting access to system settings.
As for Blackberries, be advised that Blackberry *is* available in Korea — I’m working with the provider now. If you want, I’ll give your e-mail address to Telus Korea and they will set you up with an account.
According to Apple, the 4GB iPhone will go out the door in the US as a Cingular exclusive for $499 on a two-year contract, 8GB for $599. Ships Stateside in June, Europe in fourth quarter, Asia in 2008.
Steven Jobs aims to sell 10 Mil. units (1% Market Share) by 2008.
And, I do believe Apple will take portion of pie by introducing CDMA. Most Korean are, especially young ones who have been loyal to iPod, known as the early adaptors in cellular phone industry. It is even better for Apple by the launching time as Korean Gov. is now starting to regulate subsidies on phone contracts.
I doubt that Apple will release a CDMA version of iPhone. First of all, most of the CDMA users are in Korea, and second Koreans are the ones who go around proclaiming that iPods are not “culturally compatible” with Korean tastes. This in addition to Korean IT “experts” proclaiming that they have beaten iPod in Korea.
So, there is no reason for Apple to waste its time bringing out a CDMA model for a limited market that will not accept iPhones in the first place.
Brendon, I hope you are correct about Apple-Korea trying harder; they have not been great so far in terms of stocking Apple goods for sale in Korea. I will not see an iphone here though unless some serious player like Samsung is involved.
Here, you can read what a cross-section of spoiled, fat Americans think of it
:
http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/57625
Okay, seems I was wrong about GSM getting a test in Korea. I think I was getting my standards stories mixed up.
However, the No. 1 reason why Apple could/should make an iPhone in CDMA — Japan. Japan is a huge market for Apple, and it is a CDMA country, too.
dogbertt from Korea (South) your flag
Posted January 10, 2007 at 2:42 pm | Permalink
iPhone? We’re still waiting for Blackberries.
Dogbert, they are here. I know people who use them.
Mr. Carr,
When Apple partners up with a Samsung or LG, the MIC will allow the iPhone in Korea. It will not happen before that.
There is another wrinkle, and that is the Korean government has mandated a “standard” for Korea only — called WIPI (Wireless Platform for Interoperability), a Korean-developed open source solution to the problem of having to pay Qualcomm royalties for BREW. But BREW is already in the market through KTF and comprises about 23% of the local market. Both of these are middle-ware for downloading those crappy ringtones and games to your phone. The Apple iPhone, being a handheld computer running Mac OS X and syncing by direct connect or WiFi, promises a completely different approach to getting content onto the phone. iPhone will probably not need WIPI or BREW — yet the Ministry of Information and Communication requires all phones to have WIPI. To access the Korean market, Apple will have to tailor a special phone with a useless middle-ware layer just for this one country. Big investment, small return. Korea is a rich country and a hot phone market, but it’s not the center of the universe.
Mr. Carr, Yes I recall reading about that stricture. Telephony is the last stronghold of Korean protectionism. Blackberry partnered up with KTF I believe. Games brought to you free of charge from your friendly neighborhood MIC.
Well, you have to partner with a Korean company — the telecom provider, be it Korea Telecom or SK. I think even LG Telecom is still in business.
CDMA is now widely used in other countries. iPods are not “culturally compatible” but “socially compatible” as a trendy item among young generations.
I think Apple is more concern with contents of iPhone service than CDMA solution for its launching strategy as iPhone is IT goods where contents is vital rather than consumer goods like iPod.
Anyway, I would not buy 1st Generation of iPhone.
“Content” is delivered by (i) iTunes Store (not available yet in Korea); (ii) synchronization with iTunes on a Windows or Macintosh computer when the phone is placed in its cradle; (iii) the whole wide Internet, available wirelessly by EVDO (yes, this is offered in Korea) or WiFi (ubiquitous).
Software is already here — Mac OS X works like gangbusters in Korean, and that means this phone’s interface is basically ready to go.
The only thing holding this back is the fact that Ministry of Information and Communication has tailored Korea’s technical specifications to ensure that foreign competitors are disadvantaged. As for me, I’d buy one today if I could, in July if I could, or the first day in 2008 or 2009 that it’s available here in Korea.
Yes Mr. Carr, LGT is still in business. However, it is propping up its business by forcing each LG employee to sign up 10 persons for its service. And if a certain LG employee switches over to SKT or KTF, then LGT gives the name of the employee(s) to the HR team of the LG subsiduary in question with a message “Do what you have to do, but make sure that so and so is a LGT customer”
BTW, Mr. Carr, from your comments, you know a lot about IT in Korea. Do you represent clients in those fields?
Isn’t it already on the US FTA team agenda?
Is and has been on the agenda since Chin Dae-je cooked it up in 2003. But there’s not going to be an FTA anyway, so the point is moot.
but mac users are.
ipod.
retarded and strategic-from a short-term perspective.
353 million users worldwide.
there is a lot of pressure on the itunes format to push to mp3. imho it’s a decent option.
wtf?
Partnering is an absolute!
They’re not made by a Korean company, ergo — according to “experts”, “not culturally compatible”. Yet there sure do seem to be a lot of iPods being sold.
With $3 billion in revenue last year (44% revenue growth) I’d say yes, they’re “still in business.”
They are focused on profit, and gave up their agreement with the government to push into 3G. Paid their fines, fired their CEO and got back to the business of making profits. Smart, lean, innovative (granted not nearly as much as SKT) driven company.
BTW, ex CEO Yong Nam, a very effective leader, has now taken over LGE as Sang Su retires. It will be interesting to see if he dedicates one floor of the offices to McKinsey as he reputedly did for LGT.
I’m not saying LG Telecom shouldn’t be in business, just that other than the 3G license forfeiture, they’ve had a really low profile. Three competitive telecoms companies is a good thing, assuming they don’t engage in cartelized behavior.
Focusing on profit? What an idea! Good for them. But you shouldn’t need a floor full of McKinsey consultants to do that.
Since the phone company gets a cut, a profit-focused telecom should be hot to get ahold of the Apple iPhone. Yet it would be very surprising for LGT to be the Korean partner for Apple, since LG Electronics (no relation!) makes phones.
Yes a lot of iPods are being sold, but not as much as Apple would like and not enough to justify opening iTunes in Korea.
Korean mp3 players still dominate the Korean market, and Koreans, for some prefer those microscopic irivers instead of the larger iPod.
Nam Yong, an effective leader?
The guy is know to force employees to buy a certain number of products per person, in order to prop up flagging sales.
It doesn’t take much creativity and initiative for a CEO to dump his/her
problems on the employees.
iTunes stores are being opened by Apple around the world basically in order of the size of the legal music CD and entertainment DVD markets. Despite Korea’s large GDP, somehow I suspect that the legal music CD and entertainment DVD markets are fairly small — minuscule in comparison to GDP, I’d bet.
Yet I understand it’s been reported iRiver is opening its own iTunes-like online music store. That makes me think Apple will be getting around to an iTunes Store soon. Given the nationalistic tendencies of the content providers, I’d guess the Korea iTunes Store will be heavy on foreign content (downloadable episodes of Friends, anyone?) and short on gayo and Korean dramas — which I won’t miss, but which I’d bet a lot of users would want to see.
And you’re wrong: Korean MP3 players no longer dominate the Korean market. iPod has beaten them, and iRiver and Cowon are essentially dead men walking.
They are the focused on pragmatic, immediate profit. I meant that in the sense of not going 3G. A lot of folks are clambering for the video phone boat and it just doesn’t seem to be a “killer app” to me.
Yes. I don’t see that happening.
LGT is looking at content partners along the lines of the SKT/Warner partnership, but it’s still in the early stages.
Forcing your employees to buy your products/services in Korea is SOP – the same as forcing the general population to buy Korean products. Ain’t nothing unique about Nam Yong doing it.
the legal CD market decreased over 75% from 2001 to 2005. the last remaining market that has not been devastated by rampant piracy is the mobile phone market. over 80% of contemporary cell phones are MP3 capable here and last year’s mobile phone music and ring tone sales totalled over $500 million. that’s why the warner/skt partnership may prove lucrative here (where mobile music outsells hardcopy music by a factor of six). btw, 70% of warner’s sales here are local acts…
It won’t be long until Apple comes out with a CDMA version of the phone; GSM has made a lot of inroads in the US, but it’s still predominantly a CDMA market; don’t forget where Qualcomm – the developer of CDMA – comes from. The problem in Korea thus is not just – or even – that it too is a CDMA market – but that, as Brendon points out, there are a host of other government-industry collusively created non-tariff barriers, deliberatley designed as technical issues to try to draw attention away from the blatantly protectionist nature of such barriers. The BREW/WIPI business cited by Brendon is but one example. Another is that although Korea has CDMA phones, the local CDMA hardware implementation is a bit different, so the standard CDMA hardware configuration won’t work in Korea. The effect is to burden foreign mfrs with a disproportionate cost to make Korea compatible phones in order to discourage them from entering the local market (with its boaload of other entry problems) and thus provide local mfrs with a protected platform from which to build and ship standard CDMA compatible phones into world markets that are so large that, given the protectionist advantgae it affords them, the marginal cost to the Korean mfrs of making two models of the same phone is trivial. Anyway, even if Apple comes out with a CDMA version, that don;t necessarily mean you’ll see it here in Korea.
I think that is the best reason for LG to partner with Apple. I can just taste the ChocoPie-esque innovation now!
Don’t have the 2006 stats yet (which should be around $500 million, as Judge Judy wrote), but in 2005, mobile phone music accounted for around $200 million of the $260 million digital download music market… So, yes, the paid mobile phone music market is pretty big in Korea.
FYI, the best year ever for CD and cassette sales in Korea was 1996, when it hit 415 billion won. In 2005, that number was down to 110 billion won. Probably around was 100 billion in 2006. A white paper I read predicted online and mobile music sales could hit 1 trillion won in the next 2-3 years. Pretty amazing stuff, imho.
The Apple iPhone is actually Exhibit A in why 3G is a mistake: Its media services will be delivered by plain old TCP/IP, accessed by EVDO and WiFi, without any of the BREW/WIPI middleware argle-bargle necessary to deliver content. OS X already has all those services that are being reinvented on BREW and WIPI, plus all the “Core” features necessary to manipulate data. Developers won’t have to wrestle with some insane and kludgey Java toolkit, but instead can write to OS X’s elegant Cocoa API. This is an exciting device that does an end-around bypassing and obviating the need for 3G and DMB. Want video? It’s available by TCP/IP, including streaming video.
And it highlights the misguided choice of the Ministry of Information and Communications to force WIPI on everyone: What if you don’t need WIPI?
Brendon, you know when politics meets science, god-awful things happen. That is why I do not expect to see this great device in Korea any time soon, unless Apple makes a Korean version that looks like the “Go-buk-pae” when closed . . .
I am disappointed by the Memory size. I was hoping for at least 20Gb.
Interesting. I’ll have to look into the iPhone in more detail. With video, I was thinking of video phones where you are watching the other person on the phone as they are talking. Not sure if that would be handled with the TCP/IP. If it runs streaming, I assume that would work as well.
Still gotta install it-that’s so ass-backwards. The 23% BREW-enabled phones would necessarily have a useless WIPI on them I assume?
I was thinking of the scrambling, climbing clambering not the yelling clamoring.
Yes — the Ministry of Information and Communications has told Qualcomm to come up with a WIPI compatibility layer on BREW, if Qualcomm is to sell BREW in Korea. Because WIPI is “the standard”. So Qualcomm gets to invest in all that engineering effort just for the one market — a decent-sized market, to be sure, but disproportionate effort is required.
Disproportionate for whom? Not MIC, which now gets Qualcomm to do all the heavy lifting, and spend all the dosh, necessary to get a WIPI that’s actually workable and maybe useful AND THAT THE LOCALS CAN THEN REVERSE ENGINEER (assuming MIC doesn’t make it a condition that they just hand over the source code – oh wait, they already have by declaring WIPI open source). It’s only fair, after all, considering all that “national wealth” Qualcomm has looted, loaded onto its galleon and carried away in the form of royalties on CDMA.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the general sentiment. The
dogsFTC has already been sicked on them.Here is another interesting view on this, though I really wonder if Ms. Duffy knows what is going on here:
I will believe this when I see it.
How about this: forget CDMA and GSM and WIPI and BREW. Buy an iPhone when it ships. Use it not as a phone, but for its other badass features like watching movies, internet, photos, funky pda action, etc. If you must make phone calls… use the WIFI. Missing from the list of features on the iPhone is VoIP. It’s not there yet because that’s too much for Apple to take on (i.e. a great way to piss off your new telecom partner). It’s only a matter of time after the thing ships that some developer takes care of this
missingfeature with a little widget (remember the iPhone supports w-i-d-g-e-t-s). I’ll bet there’s gonna be a lot of crafty little apps for this phone. Bluetooth SMS anyone? Walkie-talkie widget?What about the way the Safari app zooms on the contents of the New York Times? If this gains wider acceptance we may see death of WAP and goofy little browsers that only allow you to read ultra-striped sites four lines at a time.
I’d imagine that the iPhone’s current EDGE compatibility “feature” (to make happy with Cingular) is a separate chip on the circuit board, probably in the corner flagged for useless tech. Perhaps this is where Apple plans to dump its WIPI support. This too will be answered after the iPhone ships and sites like KODAWARISAN get hold of one and take it apart.
As far as Macs being more secure than PCs … fooey! go read MOAB (Month of Apple Bugs). You can learn a lot about how Apple deals with venerabilities and security releases and why people are beginning to worry about Apple’s policies.
When Apple talks about security and being more secure, what they mean to say is that Macs are less likely to be mauled by malware, trojans, viruses, or worms because of their market share. Sure OS X is more secure than say any Win9x or WinMe, but the problems encountered by Microsoft happened because they did some foolish things that seemed okay at the time (before the Internet) and didn’t really begin to change them until recently—like allowing any piece of software to run and do whatever it feels is best regardless of system security.
With greater market share comes great exposure. There will be the nasty bag of shite that PCs have been
barelycoping with in the Mac future. Mac users are lucky, so far. (In terms of stability though, OS X can’t be beat by Microsoft Windows Anything).To those people who were waiting for a 6G widescreen iPod… You probably won’t see one. Maybe next year. But that’s a big maybe. This kind of iPod would only cannibalize iPhone sales and keep Steve Jobs from capturing his targeted 1% market share. Basically, if you live in Korea and want that 6G iPod you have to wait until June at the earliest, fork over 500 clams and forget that it also makes phone calls.
Forgive me for this but there is also this take on the iphone impact in Korea. The iphone is looking better than this Samsung T9 though since it has a real operating system.
Another disturbing blurb on Apple vulnerability is Hacker defaces Apple’s Korean online store.
• That was an Apache server – this could have happened on a Linux box or Windows box. There are no details, but from the blurb I am guessing an injection attack.
• This happened in Korea – not elsewhere. I am thinking here human vulnerability, too. The Apache web site was/is still prolly poorly configured, and wide open for injection exploits and other tricks.
This doesn’t reflect anything on Mac OS X per se. Apache is an OpenSource tech, not part of OS X…
Mr. Carr, don’t get me wrong. IMHO, iPod is an innovative product and is a lot better than iRiver and Cowon.
But still numbers are numbers and as of 2006, iPod had a 10% share of the Korean MP3 player market. This is a 7 fold increase as of 2005 when iPod had only a 1.6% share, and I might add a remarkable performance over the past year. But still in terms of market share, iRiver and other Korean manufacturers still dominate the Korean market. Of course, we will have to see how things will turn out in 2007.
As a side note, I picked up this interesting Korea Times article;
I agree it’s not unique but telling your employees to sign up 10 users and threatening them with reprimands, pay cuts, etc is a bit different then forcing the general population to buy Korean products.
Because, if a Korean chooses to buy an iPod instead of a iRiver, then he/she doesn’t have to worry about getting laid off the next day. Of course if a Korean chooses to buy a BMW instead of an Equus, then he/she will get hit with some taxes, but those who can buy a BMW can afford the taxes and still won’t have to worry about losing their jobs the next day as a result of the purchase.
you missed my point. that is standard operating procedure for chaebols, just like protectionism is standard operating procedure for korean industry as a whole.
i agree with welch’s comments. innovation is one of the key’s to korea’s future if it has any intention of remaining competitive. this is not news. i participated in a conference run by alvin toffler that included the KISDI under dj six years ago where the distinction between innovative spurts and an innovative culture was clearly delineated with the latter being necessary for korea to compete globally. the iriver was an innovative spurt. a great one at the time, but one that has since fizzled due to a lack of continued innovation.
take a look at the iphone presentation-that’s innovation.
btw, toffler again gave some advice re: the necessity and challenges facing korea in terms of innovation. unfortunately, he was slammed by a lot of folks-just like welch. his recommendations improving this were:
_ Recognizing that failure is often the launch pad for success. Many of the most famous innovators in history failed repeatedly before attaining their goal;
_ Supporting non-governmental organizations that fund or conduct research;
_ Offering prizes or other incentives to motivate cutting-edge research;
_ Breaking down barriers that prevent the exchange of information and knowledge among various sectors of the economy and society;
_ Acknowledging that it is not only “experts’’ who innovate. Computers and the Internet make it easy for people from all walks of life to contribute new ideas; and
_ Creating, as already noted, an education system in which originality and far-ranging curiosity are encouraged and rewarded.
“Korea has very smart and creative people,’’ he said. “But Korea is not getting the full benefit of their talents. They need to be freed from overcontrol by top-down bureaucracy and from excessive ‘groupism.’”
this is not rocket science.
judge judy writes:
In this regard, I am reminded of this constant refrain about Gerry Bevers and his Dokdo heresy: You are not a professional historian, so shut up. Or my own experiences trying to discuss technology standards within Korean law firms (mainly trying to get IMAP mailboxes): You are not an engineer, so leave this to the experts. Sure, I’m just the poor sap who’s stuck using the stuff.
Along those lines, one of my favorite past times is to play dumb and ask lots of simple questions. It consistently drives “experts” nuts here.
Brendon wrote:
That is such a cop-out. There is no certification for insight and imagination and this only unnerves those that crave the validation of their self worth.
dda wrote:
Apple was very quiet about this thus I had no other information about it. I’m glad to hear this is more about third-party software than an Apple OS issue. I guess the Apple-Korea team needs a good IT person then. I will only worry if someone creates an effective trojan for the OS — one that does not currently exist and is beyond the abilities of Bulgarians and their wintel skills.
A bit of news, European customers will get their iPhones late this year and Asian customers will get theirs next year.
However, no decision has been made on whether to develop a CDMA version.
interesting- since when does US providers use GSM over CDMA/TDMA?
apache-that stable software microsoft runs their own servers with…
Haisan> As I rember KTF ran a GSM pilot program around (or part of) the World Cup in 2002. Except you could not sign up for GSM account it was intended solely for the use of tourists with GSM phones. It was not nation wide (just high traffic tourist areas, or rather areas Korea thinks are high traffic tourist areas), and thusly got very poor reviews from most users. The project was abandoned.
Er… Microsoft eats their own dog food, IIS, right?
Roaming for GSM phones is available is available from SK, at the airport at least… So there *is* some GSM in Korea, just for a fee, and people with existing, foreign accounts…
Here is another point, made by another blogger at BBC – Tommorow:
. . . “good design is at the heart of what makes devices work for their users”. That is a key issue to why many Samsung devices do not go over well with consumers. The only really nice Samsung device I’ve seen are their flat-screen monitors, which are truly plug-and-play, both here and elsewhere where the voltage is different.
I have an expensive Samsung air filter that looks slick on the outside but I have to take off screws, put on rubber gloves (to avoid cutting my hands on the plastic edges inside) to clean this air filter every few months. Though the front comes off after removing four screws, one can not remove the front completely because a wire connects circuitry on the front panel to the mail body! I can not clean all of the surfaces that need cleaning inside too because there are so many baffles and edges that can not be reached unless smaller brushes are used. It is torture just to service this and all the air filters sold by Samsung. Simple, easy maintenance on this device is impossible because though the outside looks good, the engineers that implemented the design did a horrible job, leaving one with a pretty shell, wrapped around a poorly engineered device. If Samsung’s Yahoo new phones are anything like their air filters, then they will die a quick death and Samsung will still have a lesson to learn — which I hope they do.
Having seen what he did with appliances such as this perhaps Samsung will have André Kim pimp their phones.
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