Several people emailed this to me yesterday, so it must be big news:
“KT to Exclusively Supply iPhone from July.”
UPDATE: Maybe not — Newsis (and others), quoting a KT official, said that while KT is considering adopting the iPhone, no decision has been made and that the Maeil Gyeongje report was groundless. Sorry.
WTF is it with the iPhone, anyway? I got more emails about this than I ever got about North Korea, and even my wife called up after reading the blog post all giddy.
The Herald Gyeongje, incidentally, asks whether the competition between KT and SKT over the outdated iPhone (apparently, Apple did not include Korea in its list of 80 countries in which it plans to seel its new iPhone 3GS) might be a form of sadaejuui. One local telecom official — and if you can’t trust local telecom officials on matters pertaining to imported telecom products, who can you trust? — said that while expanding consumer choice is important, if Korea were to unreasonably adopt outdated iPhones because early adaptors and fanboys were pushing public opinion, it could poison the Korean mobile industry, and that consumers needed to abandon their fantasies about the iPhone and examine what value it will bring.
{ 75 comments… read them below or add one }
Strangely, there’s no news of this in the Korean language press, so part of me wonders whether this is a case of a reporter getting ahead of herself, since there were rumors of Apple and KT getting close to sealing a deal.
However, another part of me is really hoping that this one’s for real.
The blackberry is far better. iPhone is more of a gimmick, than a real business smart phone that can get things done. Try to type something in iPhone.. good luck.. it’s horrible. iPhone is like a toy, you show other people how cool it is. But as for usefulness, it’s crap. After using the iPhone to find out what all the fuss was about, I couldn’t wait until I got my blackberry back. I gave the iPhone away to somebody. A few months later, I heard from the person that it broke, doesn’t work. It’s assembled in China.
Even the salesman who sold the iPhone said it was crap, don’t get it.
People like shiny, smooth things with intuitive UIs, regardless of the fact that they lack dozens of features found in more advanced phones.
For me, the biggest factor is the fact that I want one. However, it’s also a very good indicator of the extent to which Korea’s import xenophobia still exists–and thus, a good indicator of future trends in local culture and business.
I agree with everything so far:
1-it’s (the iphone) horrible
2-people love shiny things
3-people have a right to like them just for being new and shiny regardless of what I think
4-Holterbarbour’s note that the real issue is that he or she wants one -and if I could extrapolate-yet it is the Korean telecom ass that decides whether the publics demands are worthy of supply (wtf)… so much for market economics
Also… I think old Maddox might have best summed up the piece of crap that is the iPhone some time ago here:
http://www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=iphone
Maeil Gyeongju? Gyeongju’s local daily rag?
The hate has become chicken-egg.
Koreans don’t get the latest model from them, and the big international companies don’t get any love from the Korean protectionist market.
Having said that, I wanted to throw a brick at the window of APPLE Store on Regent Street, and tell all the inane hipsters browsing there to get a life when my Powerbook hard disk (with 3 years of hard work and trouble with compiling multiple linux programs) failed on me with no warning and a *genius* at the genius bar told me to go to a external data recovery service for about 600 dollars to get my data back… Everything that was once cool about it, starts to annoy massively – Apple- it’s a fashion, not substance.
Regent Street? Where are you?
As for whether or not the iPhone is useful, I don’t have any strong proclivity towards the iPhone, the Pre, or anything else. But not everyone wants the same thing in their phone. Maybe it IS a toy. But guess what? That’s exactly what some people are looking for.
Why? Apple offers a one-year limited warranty on the Powerbook, and so do the manufacturers of other laptop computers and most consumer hard drives. You say yours failed after three years’ use, which is after the expiration of the warranty. (Assuming you didn’t purchase the two years’ additional warranty cover available as an AppleCare Protection Plan, which I always get.) What service is Apple supposed to provide to you beyond the warranty?
nothing, legally, but it sure does expire like a Chrysler.
for some reason, I still keep my old laptops.
I have 4 now.
They all still run.
Some are as old as 2002.
Nobody told me to go spend $600 to fix it, and none required Apple care or its equivalent.
Brendon, Korean news has been overly stressing of late that apple ipod batteries explode.
Hasn’t happenned to my ipod mini, but the battery’s been dead for 2 years or more.
Is this a smear campaign or something legit?
I assume they’re trying to say your iphone will blow up on you.
Cute.
simple google search suggests London?
Good for you, Yuna. British accent?
To be fair, that can happen on any machine, not just your powerbook. I keep one free utility to warn me of an imminent hard disk failure (SMARTReporter) and I make monthly backups because of business.
“Yuna”, you should do the same instead of blaming Apple. Include a backup schedule in your affairs.
@8
I received a Panasonic personal cassette player in days of yore – when such things were the very hight of chic. I got it for my birthday. It broke about one week after the warranty lapsed. I wrote to Panasonic telling them that I was greatly anguished by their woeful product and after a brief exchange of letters, they sent me gift vouchers to the amount of the original purchase! With them I bought a newer model and it also lasted a smidgen longer than one year. I wrote again to Panasonic, but they didn’t reply to my charge that their products were ineluctably shit.
I recommend you write to Apple telling them that they are an awesome company and that you’ve been left bewildered, vertiginous even, by the breakdown of their product. Also, perhaps you could intimate that some gift vouchers might bring a sense of stability to your world. Try to use the word “closure” if you are writing to their American offices.
Then, use the gift vouchers to enrich Bill Gates further.
@Brendon,
I know. But they look like they should be more helpful in their T-shirts and name tags and Gap commercial- like front….
It’s just all the other laptops I’ve had didn’t fail after 3 years – they simply became outdated. In terms of hardware, maybe it was because my Powerbook was pre-intel, but the awful rattling fan noise akin to low-flying bombers and the failure for programs to compile successfully all added to my grief.
Regent street is in London. I was in London when it happened. The external data recovery told me that it would take 2-3 weeks and 600 dollars even just to see if I could get it recovered. Came to Korea where supposedly not many Mac users exist – and got the thing recovered, put on a new hard disk of the same spec, in 3 days for ~ 200 dollars. It’s easy to get answers in Korea & it helps if you speak the language.
BTW the press are also berating the Korean companies like Samsung for putting out 한물 간 old models from abroad in the domestic market. They are laying into LG Prada II for a software bug,
British Accent, yeah, definitely.. though it’s becoming a 짬뽕 at the moment..
Oh yes, or you could just buy a thesaurus, like me! (You might have to pronounce that differently if you are English, though.)
the same ipod battery articles in Korea also suggest that ‘after service’ in Korea is not the same as the US.
they claim Apple A/S in Korea gives more of a who gives a damn attitude.
http://www.ddaily.co.kr/news/news_view.php?uid=51193
Message is,
1/ apple stuff in Korea will blow up before you !
2/ apple warranty service in Korea is worse than in America ! Buyer beware !
3/ I better go buy another Samsung !
by this point, it’s safe to say the google android phone is a failure, right? This German thing from T-mobile doesn’t have as many apps as the iphone, it seems.
Yuna, your loss of data is self-inflicted, so you should take responsibility for it, rather than blaming Apple. Backup! Always backup! Get a Time Capsule, and use Time Machine. Set it up and then forget about it. Then the next time your hard drive dies, simply reinstall everything – operating system, programs, preferences, data – without hassle.
(Been there done that: MBA hard-drive blew up; free quick replacement (in Korea); quick reinstallation of everything from Time Capsule; no data loss; no hasssle).
Time Machine wasn’t around for Tiger OS by default.
It wasn’t so much the loss of data, it was the fact that I’d had many old and defunct compiler programs compiled there with the Mac compiler. Anyway, it’s working now, and I’ve also got a new laptop.
But whilst trying to use the Carbon Copy Cloner, I’m finding my system cannot be copied for a boot-up backup.
One of my students is kinda high up among the developers at SK (SK was originally offered the iPhone franchise), and assures me the iPhone is not coming here any time soon. He said Apple wanted to place such restrictions on SK and charge such a high per-phone “franchise” fee that SK turned them down.
I’ve had computers since 1979, and numerous Macs since 1984 – my original Mac Plus from then still works fine. The recent operating systems up to Leopard are far more stable than in the old days, and I look forward to even better stability with Snow Leopard. By the way, both my replacement hard drive and MBA survived an end-to-end tumble on concrete (albeit truncating the corners of the beast), brought on by one of those very rare occasions when my wife was ever-so-slightly less than perfect.
Either you like Apple or you hate it. As for me, and this is my very personal opinion, well, after purchasing an iPhone 2 years ago, I was amazed about this ‘tool’. No only because of the design, but also of the functionality. After having Windows-based machines for 2 decades, my latest purchased was a MacBook. I ordered this via phone at Apple Korea, and everything went flatness. And I tell you what, the setup was boring. Connecting to my wireless network and to Windows-based machines, it just work. Backup’s, well Yuna, even you do have a windows machine, this is very necessary procedure, it’s running now with time machine. As for the Apple service here in Korea, up to know I cannot comment this. I admit, Apple stuff is more expensive than Samsung or LG, but at least for me, I can choose my OS language freely in OS X.
Don’t misunderstand me, my LG notebook didn’t let me down the last 2 years, but for me, I like Steve’s stuff.
And again, either you like Apple or not, that’s a personal choice.
Andy
Arrgh, leave me alone, you Apple lovers..have I failed to mention: I haven’t used Windows as my primary in a long long time. Apple was meant to save me from having to partition my laptop into linux+windows(just in case I have to do some normal everyday stuff) I hate Windows more as an operating system. It’s just I was disappointed with the Apple hardware fail. I wasn’t going to folk out extra 100 squid or so as a poor broke student for their Applecare which would have expired anyway..
Also, I just don’t get what drives people to camp outside the shops like they’re getting concert tickets before the release of a bloody phone, as I saw scores of part-hipster-part-white-otaku types queuing outside the flagship store as well as all the O2 shops whenever they brought out a new iPhone with some memory upgrade. I save that sort of enthusiasm for something with a soul, like a handbag, or something. I had to pass by the police cordoned queues to work while I was worried about never getting back my poor programs. That’s the background to my story.
Jesus, you techno-geeks are duller than a vacation in Saskatchewan (although useforstuff’s link was much appreciated).
Disclosure: Still using my Motorola StarTAC II and 2006 hp notebook.
I’ve known two people who had their Power Mac laptops not work after couple of years. They go dead. No power, nothing. Twice it has happened to two different peoples who got them at the same time.
They are overrated cheap plastic junk. Try loading some free software you found on the internet. More often then not, you’ll have problems with compatibility. How long do iPods last? Probably not very long.
Meanwhile, I still have my old Dell Inspiron working like a charm after 5 years.
I presume you mean compatibility with viruses, cm?
i have the google 3g and i LOVE it!
on a completely different note, WTF morgan freeman!
First, the hard drive in your mac is made by the same companies that make hard drives for a pc. If your data is important, back it up or get a RAID setup. The only person to blame for you losing important data is yourself.
Second, the fact that the iPhone isn’t being released is basically because Apple won’t drop the wifi function of the phone makes me happy it isn’t being released. The fact that FANCY SHMANCY 600,000 won Korean phones don’t have wifi and email functions pretty much indicates that, like the car companies, Korean phone manufactures LOVE raping the Korean populace while they bend head over heals to entice the foreign market with things like…wait for it…..wifi and email functions.
How much is a Haptic in Toronto? $99. How much is a Haptic in Seoul? Too much.
The iphone is great if you live in markets where you can fully utilize the apps for it. Too bad Korea does not utilize the apps…but Koreans sure do create them.
I’m curious if anyone’s even heard of Palm Pre? It’s the proclaimed “iPhone killer”. I have one, and it’s more like “iPhone pimp slapper”, but I guess there’s no marketing outside the U.S. at all.
I’m curious if anyone’s even heard of Palm Pre? It’s the proclaimed “iPhone killer”. I have one, and it’s more like “iPhone b*tch slapper”, but I guess there’s no marketing outside the U.S. at all.
#24,
Never having been to that province (nor Manitoba, too – but I can’t wait!), but my eyes started glazing over after the first few comments. I’m happy for you folks who are excited and semi-tumescent over another improved method of not actually talking to people, but I’m no longer enamored of electronic geekdom and therefore I’ll shut up.
#17 wjk:
by this point, it’s safe to say the google android phone is a failure, right? This German thing from T-mobile doesn’t have as many apps as the iphone, it seems.
Android Market listed 2,300 applications as of March 2009, for devices running Linux-based Android.
iTunes App Store listed 50,000 applications as of June 2009, for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices.
Back in April, Samsung launched the i7500, Samsung’s first device to run Android.
#29 taekwonV:
I’m curious if anyone’s even heard of Palm Pre? It’s the proclaimed “iPhone killer”. I have one, and it’s more like “iPhone pimp slapper”, but I guess there’s no marketing outside the U.S. at all.
Palm Pre runs Palm webOS. A grand total of 17 applications at launch date.
No more Apple tax for me. No more proprietary lock-in (e.g., iTunes music library/FairPlay copy protection). No more failed Hitachi DeathStar hard disk drive inside the vaunted Time Capsule. (Do a search on “time capsule fail”.) Goodbye, Apple. You’re no better than Microsoft, maybe worse. Hello, cheap netbook and Android.
This is NOT xenophobia, it’s much simpler than that. The iPhone has built-in Wi-Fi. Korean service providers are scared of built-in Wi-Fi because it circumvents the proprietary Web download services from which they get a cut, so they force even local phone makers to cripple Net functions in their phones for the Korean market.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2906330
Apple is not willing to remove features and change its contracts to match the anticompetitive whims of Korean mobile service providers. So, no iPhone.
None of us know what one factor, or combination of factors, is keeping iPhone out of Korea. However, given that Apple has been able to launch in 80 countries, it’s safe to say that what’s keeping iPhone out of Korea is something attributable to Korea.
Why won’t Korea Inc. let its citizens have what folks in Ivory Coast and Botswana can enjoy? Is Paraguay more advanced than Korea?
The Joongang Daily article comes as a surprise as I never heard of the wifi aspect. This is the price South Korea pays for (1) being half a country of only 50 million people (2) adopting San Diego-based Qualcomm’s CDMA standard that nobody really uses (just Verizon Wireless comes to mind). (3) letting LG Telecom get gobbled up and not opening up the market to small operators, such as a Helios or so in the U.S.
But, I believe the South Korean government specifically made some requirement in the telecom industry (as in adopting a certain standard that makes the iPhone unworkable). I can’t remember what it was, but I’m pretty sure you can’t use the phone even if Apple were to offer it without wifi. I forget exactly what it was. South Korea does this to protect her cellphone manufacturers.
Heh, and yea, I got lucky and got my iphone today. 50,000 apps. I guess Apple’s OS is going to win out (which would mean the South Korean government was protecting the WRONG market).
@Brendon
i can’t agree with you more.
Korea is still a “protected” market. I am using a Motorola Razr here in Korea. I thought, I can download my purchased mp3 songs to my phone, but I was mistaken. I have first to convert those at SK’s website. My brother has the same phone in Germany, and…. he can directly load his phone with his songs.
My point is, as long as there is not a real competition here in Korea, prices will stay high and functions will be limited.
BTW: the iTunes shop here in Korea sucks (sorry). This is a ‘kindergarten’
“I’ve known two people who had their Power Mac laptops not work after couple of years.”
WOW, astonishing, and you’ve never known anyone with a windoze computer that’s failed!!! Well now you do – here I am!!!
“Meanwhile, I still have my old Dell Inspiron working like a charm after 5 years.”
My 1996 PowerMac still working, my 2000 iMac – minor CD failure under warranty, repaired and working fine ever since, i-book 2002 fine until just recently, but can make it work with a bit of pressure in the right place, and the fix is easy if only I could be bothered to open it all up and glue a piece of card in the right place – and that failure was probably due to my bad habit of carrying it around at the corner with one hand.
It kind of ridiculous comparison, any manufactured good especially electronic will have an incidence of failure. Sometimes you get a lemon, sometimes they go on forever.
Suddenly there are way too many iphone related (not to do with iphone coming here) Korean articles on the daum/naver main that makes me think there’s definitely something in the pipeline…
picture drawn with iphone
“iphone is a religion” -talking about what I’d mentioned earlier in this thread
BTW there’s a new apple authorised store about to open in July just down from Kangnam Kyobo..
Yep there is – I go past it every day – Frisbee. – Why do the Korean Apple stores have to have a different name?
I’d say hi when you go by…except…
They’re independent authorised resellers, there is no official Apple Store in Korea, although if my recollection is correct the one in CoEx used to be called Apple store, before and after Apple thought of the idea and opened the first official one in the US.
Yes so my question is why no official Apple Store? Not big enough market? So when it becomes big enough and Apple decides to open one, what will happen to Frisbee?
Don’t know but looks like their using the classic konglish marketing phrase
GRAND OPEN
they’re
meh… who cares? I’m sure I can whip out my parents old Motorola brick phone from the early 80′s and be fine. Hell, I still have a functioning Commodore 128 computer back home in Tennessee.
I just have (not need a phone) for others’ convienience to call me for work and my motorcycle club. I hate spending more than 30 seconds on my phone. It’s a cult I tell you, a cult…
I’m curious about one thing, in comparison. I’ve found that having a cell phone in the States was much more expensive than here since the US telecoms charge more and offer service that is not very impressive either. Does anyone else find this to be the case?
Also:
That is weird! Is there a proprietary Korean mp3 file format out here or some other audio file format that Korean-only!?
#36 HAN
Heh, and yea, I got lucky and got my iphone today. 50,000 apps. I guess Apple’s OS is going to win out (which would mean the South Korean government was protecting the WRONG market).
Hello…can you hear me? Now why would the Korean government protect the Korean market from the iPhone considering that these devices contain Samsung ARM-based processors, NAND and DDR DRAM memory?
The situation may change in the future though. Apple is assembling a semiconductor design team. Word has it that they’re looking to design their own processors for future iPhones.
http://www.edn.com/blog/1750000175/post/450044045.html
There’s other phones and operating systems besides the iPhone. If Apple cannot crack the Korean market then Windows Mobile OS and Android will simply dominate. Android is already dominant with the Taiwanese makes like HTC and the Chinese up-starts. The one thing that concerns me, speaking from a developer’s (not a consumer) POV, is that Android is open-source, so the manufacturers can tweak the OS to be very hardware-specific, which may present application portability issues, and the Android app market could wind up being very fractured.
More signs of the coming apocalypse
E-passports with flexible OLED display
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYMTFDydhNs
Han — the restriction you’re referring to was WIPI (Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability). It was a locally developed Web protocol that mobile devices here were required to use to access the Internet by law. But that law was repealed in December, and the requirement expired in April. So they’re no legal obstacle anymore — it’s all the anticompetitive practices of local service providers.
Brendon, Apple has to manufacture CDMA iPhone first. iPhone is a GSM phone. A few carriers in China use CDMA, too.
Andy1306, have you ever used any cellphone in the US? My carrier is Verizon Wireless, which has the best network and customer service in the US. Verizon’s software that cam with the phone is for downloading songs that I had to purchase from Verizon. Of course, I didn’t. I had to covert music files to copy them to my phone when I used the phone as a MP3 player for a while. I use iPod now.
yuna, no PC maker manufactures hard disk drive except for Samsung, and none of them guarantees the recovery of the data of HDD when it fails. PC makers including Apple do not control the quality of HDDs, and HDDs FAIL. Even a brand new HDD fails. I have two external drives to back up my files. If you care about your data, it is your responsibility to back up your files.
I just bought a 128GB solid state drive on ebay one hour ago to replace HDD in my laptop because I wants a little faster and safer storage.
CDMA is a 2G standard. The 3G networks in Korea are GSM-derivatives, not CDMA.
Brendon, iPhone has both 2G and 3G components. Because 3G coverage is very limited in the US, iPhone switches between 2G and 3G depending on the location. I’m not sure Apple will introduce iPhone in Korea only for 3G. iPhone then cannot be used where HSPDA is not provided in Korea. Let me know if I’m wrong.
Correction: HSPDA -> HSDPA
I think its time to consider one other thing, the size and potential of the Korean market. Is the projected market share Apple may get worth the cost and hassle to get the iPhone here? Sure you will get the gross sales, but then is it worth it when you have to pay off the service providers and take out the overhead for the operation here. Is the few million you get as result really worth it?
One argument that amuses me is Apple needs to come here because Korea is such high-tech leader. What that argument fails to recognize is that Korea is notorious as locking out forgien companies (especially in the wake of the WIPI issue). Failure to establish yourself in Korea is likely just a fait accompli, not a the black mark that some here seem to think it is.
To all of this, remember the Nokia adventure of 10 years ago. They came for about a year, partly because of the size of the market and potential as a test-bed for new products. In the end the figured it was not worth it. Sure you can say they sold non-competitive phones. But logically, Nokia would have changed their product line-up if the market was indeed worth staying in. There back now, it will be interesting to see how long they last.
One more thought about the Korean market. It seems to me to require quicker product life-cycles than other places. One problem with the iPhone will be the pace of product upgrades. The phone has been around for three years, and this year marked the first major upgrade in hardware and software combined. I do not think this is too compatible with the Korean market.
Netizen Kim does bring up an interesting anti-protectionist point about the origins of many of the chips in iPhone. However, the issue there is the IP on those same chips and chipsets, which is why the WIPI standard was promulgated originally (worries about all that outflow to IP holders abroad). They mention of a Apple semiconductor team is a further indication of this. This will likely result in a preparatory ASIC that could be produced by anyone, not just Samsung beholden in turn to the ARM-chip rights holders.
All of which brings me to my reason for the current hold up, the service providers. Apple wants either more of the revenue, or to reduce the overall cost. For example, both providers make a significant amount of money out of music downloads. Apple does not offer that service in Korea, which means the phone would have to accept the service providers downloads. The problem is, what ever happens if Apple ever makes a Korean iTunes. Such would only eat in to the service providers current profit, so they likely figure why help a future competitor. Likewise look at the “Apps” on the iPhone. You want the weather now on your Korean phone, you log into the service providers site, which brings revenue. On the iPhone you just find an open wifi connection, and its free.
As far as the Blackberry/iPhone debate, who really cares? They both satisfy different parts of the market, and do it well. Why all the hate?
@QueensGuy
No, i never used a phone in the US. I am enjoying the free market of Germany in where you can buy korean phones, korean cars, korean TVs cheaper than here in Korea. That is called “competition”. An actually i don’t understand some of the posts here in this forum, unless they are hired to write and defend the korean protection system. The real losers of such protective economy are the consumers. But, I think this is a topic for another post.
I have a Iphone 2G. It works fine with my SK-USIM card, as long you are outside Korea.
most people wield a blackberry provided by work.
same people option to wield an iphone usually not provided by work.
i have a blackberry now.
I am jealous of the iphone. But unwilling to be an islave.
What a surprise; wjk is a crackberry slave.
I understood that there is a Korean iTunes the iPods already sold here make use of it, although I’ve been told the selection available is limited due to regional licensing issues.
Interesting comment from cm, considering that for some Kyopos here in Seoul, the Blackberry has become some sort of a status symbol. Something that distinguishes the English speaking, I have a US college degree and a hot job in a foreign firm lot from the Konglish speaking, I have a Korean college degree, and am a salaryman slave in a chaebol lot.
That’s because only foreign firms use the Blackberry. The domestic firms, croaking away at the bottom of the well, aren’t implementing mobile communications.
My law partner came back from a trip to New York astonished at the Blackberry. He said, and I quote, “Every civilized person in New York, no matter what country they’re from, carries a Blackberry.” Apparently seeing African bankers carry them around shocked him quite a bit. He was flabbergasted at how badly Koreans were missing the boat on this tool that everyone else in the world was using.
Don’t get me started on our firm’s use of technology (what technology?) though…
I believe that in either this thread or the FTA thread last week someone mentioned that it’s only a matter of time now until the press talks about how the iPhone is going to fail in the unique and highly demanding market.
I think we have a winner:
http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2009/06/22/2009062200654.html
Gotta be some escape from work, you won’t see me with one anytime soon.
Blackberry, I mean
I expect to see iPhone with a multi-core ARM processor and 64GB memory at Apple Developer’s Conference in June, 2010. I think those who want iPhone in Korea want to have this rather than current iPhone with a single-core processor, which is less efficient than multi-core. 32GB is still small, too. iPhone OS 3.0 still cannot do multi-tasking, but the newer version of iPhone OS might be able to do it when the multi-core processor iPhone will come out.
Operators here charge about 2 to 3.5 won per kilobyte in data transmission, while also charging separately for content fees. So it takes about 5,000 won (about $4) to download a 3-megabyte pop song, 20,000 won for downloading three ring tones and about 40,000 won for an hour of news searching.
— WOW–
that’s heavy.
I think, this makes it very clear, why the IPhone isn’t here yet.
Cmm @64
I’m not a techie, and after “teaching” for two years I have no intention of ever
returningstarting a business here. However, even I can grasp theutter hopelessness“uphill battle” faced by outsider firms in Korea upon comparing the article linked to by Cmm above with this:http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2009/06/133_47277.html
If Americans knew what goes on here, would they/we ever buy another Korean product?
Queens Guy, I expect by 2011 the iPhone announced at WWDC will have 256GB of memory, eight cores, and a strawberry soda fountain dispenser. That’s the one we should all want. Thank goodness Korea’s non-tariff trade barriers protect us from making a “wrong purchase” of that current piece of shit iPhone 3G S which sold a million units over the weekend to the poor, deluded fools who think they should have free choice.
Well yes there is that. But on the other hand, employees of Korean firms, who already feel like they’re slaves, are reluctant to receive a device which they feel is an electronic collar.
anecdotal evidence that the theotherkorean is correct:
an electronic collar — exactly what one of my Korean vendors (working for a major American company) referred to his new (company) Blackberry as yesterday in a meeting.
Exactly.
Per this thread, Korean business is not as connected as business communities in other countries (Korea finishing 11th out of 16 countries in a Nokia/Siemens report).
Perhaps one could keep a cracked iphone for use in Korea (?).
Now it gets interesting. SK Telecom is putting the Blackberry Bold on sale…. WITH wi-fi:
http://www.telsk.com/solution/sol_Mobile_berry_02.asp
As a BlackBerry user, let me show you the off button on the device. Works great! I am sure when I turn it on on Monday, after my little vacation is over, it will be full of messages, but who cares? Drawing a line between work and private life is easy. OFF.
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