The article in the Joongang Daily about the Apple iPhone launch in Korea is better read in reverse. Step back in time with the bottom paragraph:
“The important thing about the iPhone’s launch here is not that a certain popular brand has finally been introduced to Korea but that it will be a catalyst for the local smartphone market to grow,” [Hwang Sung-jin, an analyst at Prudential Life Insurance] said,
Thats odd. When I was over there, I read, before the iPhone, Korean phone companies were on the cutting edge. That Korean 3G system and mobile technologies were the envy of the world. Everyone in the world feverishly wanted to implement DMB or whatever permutation of CDMA Korea had. Why would Korea need to spur the “local smartphone market”? Going up, you find out:
KT’s announcement comes after the nation’s telecom regulator gave Apple Korea the green light to launch the phone here last Thursday, making an exception to the law that requires handsets sold in Korea to use domestic locating technology.
“Exception”? “Use domestic locating technology”? Yes take note your anti-globalization weenies, trade barriers actually HURT your competitiveness, not help it. Korea’s cell market might as well be a textbook case. Of course take note this transparent demonstration of the ills of non-tariff barriers is lost on Korean regulators. They chose to give an “exception” not the wiser course of getting rid of the barrier all together.
Speaking of transparency and wisdom, you got to love who will get the first iPhones in Korea:
[KT] will hold a launching event for around 1,000 preorder customers picked through a drawing in Jamsil Indoor Stadium in Seoul. It added that it also plans to include interested people who have not preordered iPhones in the event.
So let me get this straight, somebody who did not give you money early for a iPhone may not get it at the expense of did not give money. Great customer service! The last provision also makes one wonder how legitimate that drawing is, but I am sure that worry is not well founded.
{ 49 comments… read them below or add one }
“So let me get this straight, somebody who did not give you money early for a iPhone may not get it at the expense of did not give money.”
Nothing lowers the cyber real estate values around the Marmot’s Hole faster than a post by the linguistically challenged Dram Man. Just what are you trying to say with this sentence, why is it so hard to get it straight, and why didn’t you re-read what you wrote at least once before broadcasting it to the world? Robert, please, if you insist on allowing Dram Man to continue posting here, force him to hire a proofreader/editor!
If that sentence represents ’straight’, what sort of ‘bent’ lies in Dram_Man’s mind?
Hey, it was a typo; the meaning is clear. Down bad monkey, down!
And while I don’t share Dram Man’s enthusiasm for globalization due to the toll I maintain it has taken on the US economy, something he and I agree to disagree on (if you engage him on the subject, his positions are extremely well founded and reasoned), as aKorean cell phone and American I-phone user, he presumably has seen the performance difference.
Methinks mandating the use of “Domestic Locating Technology” for the local handset market is not so much “anti-globalization/free trade” than the fact that locals would be obviously better at “Domestic Locating” than, say, Vijay from Bangalore.
Whenever I hear long-time expats and other apologists talk about how much Korea has changed since the bad old “gwasobi” and “shin-boho-muyok-juui” days, I just think of the country’s telecom market and laugh. And yet Pres. Obama promised 2MB to move forward with the KORUS-FTA, as if the very idea of a free trade agreement with a country like Korea isn’t ludicrous on its face!
Washington needs to remind Seoul that the purpose of free trade is trade.
DLB
“your(?) anti-globalization weenies”
I assume the agw’s are liberals. Just CAN’T leave personal politics out of it, can we? What’s the point of trying to ‘discuss’ something when you initiate the bullshit from the very start?
While my view on this differs from his, I have much infinately more respect for his well-conceived arguments than I do for those of a kneejerk, namecalling, breastbeating person on the other side of the issue.
Having said that…
The pretentious MAC gene does not reside in the Korean genome. I predict the i-phone will be of very limited success here and will be withdrawn from the market within 18 months.
Dram man’s typos/grammar aside, I spent most of yesterday trying to preorder an iPhone only to encounter the usual difficulties that come with having a foreign national identity number.
After calling, faxing and emailing, I managed to actually preorder the phone (including paying a 30,000 won deposit), and moved to the next stage of creating my new KT account (phone number, etc, only to discover that once again my foreigner ID number wouldn’t work. After more phone calls (unanswered) and a few emails, I received an email from KT politely informing me that foreigners simply cannot purchase the iPhone.
I have no idea if this only pertains to online purchases, or if the iPhone is off-limits to non-Koreans period (the email wasn’t too detailed), but it was a right kick in the bollocks after a day of anticipating getting the damn thing in my sweaty little hands.
So for those married to Korea nationals, get the phone in your partner’s name. For everyone else, you’d better start whispering sweet nothing in your significant other’s ear (assuming he/she is Korean) if you want the iPhone.
“The pretentious MAC gene does not reside in the Korean genome.”
…but Brendon is doing his part to “splice” it in.
Anyway, “MAC gene” no, but the “ipod gene” is here. If iphones sell as well as ipods, it’ll be no problem. However, the success of the ipod could be counterproductive… I would consider an iphone if I didn’t already have an ipod touch.
Prediction: a month or two from now we’ll be commenting on a post about how thousands of early adopters are livid that the iPhone doesn’t work properly in Korea. If mobile network problems don’t do it, then poor international IP connectivity and the weird world of the Korean web will.
tab, you can the recent Firefox thread for more on this situation.
person43 — Actually, I expect that will be the case. Korean web design and coding practices are inimical to a good experience on iPhone, and given the general ignorance of alternatives such as Firefox, no web sites will have tested against anything other than Internet Explorer 6 on Windows.
The iPhone plays mp3s, right? Then it’s already light years ahead of my late-model Samsung. Y’know, the one with the “mp3 player.”
i’m interested in whether the iphone will be able to use commercial location-based services if it’s not required to do so. it’s not very clear why they would grant an opt-out for domestic location-based tech yet exclude the ability to trace lost/stolen phones.
anyone have a guess as to what’s behind the curtain on this decision?
Here is my prediction. If Hyolee, or any of the other idols are caught using an iphone, it’ll be a big hit. If no one ‘influential’ is found to be using an iphone, it’ll die a fast death.
The good news is that there has been more and more media regarding how backward previously forward technologies are. Word of mouth from people who’ve lived overseas, complaints by people who’ve lived overseas, and a general increase in use of web standardized sites (tumblr/wordpress/facebook/myspace/etc) are helping to slowly change things.
It should be noted that Daum was one of the first Korean companies to make their sites standards compliant…which is nice. Is it true that everyone at Daum will receive an iphone? I think I read that somewhere.
Speaking of Daum, someone tell me why they have been allowed to use a logo for the better part of a decade that is an almost direct copy of the E-Bay logo?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F.....n_logo.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EBay_Logo.svg
what all the naysayers fail to remember is the whole experience Korea went through with iPods.
there was a time that no one here knew what an iPod was and when they did arrive and locals and exapts started to throw cash around in those stores, newspapers went on and on about how, yes iPods were okay, but Korean products were better. fast forward to today, when was the last time you saw someone walking proudly with an iRiver (if anybody still remembers them)???
i predict in a year everyone will want one and companies like Samsung are going to have to work a lot harder to keep people away from the iPhone.
as others have said, it only takes a Hyoree or other trend follower to pick one up and make it “okay” for everyone else.
so, i will further predict, that while the initial success will be slow, after christmas, iPhones will start selling like hotcakes for the new year, graduations, and what not.
i work at an uppity school with the kids of singers, actors, CEOs, and chaebols. most of them proudly tote around their iPod Touch. some of those kids will have one after christmas, and when the others kids see that it is an iPod Touch with a camera and a more powerful chip and it makes calls, then its success will be final …
I’m not really an IP lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but the reason is pretty simple, really. Since the Daum logo appears merely to be “inspired by” the eBay logo rather than a carbon copy, the only way to prohibit its use under Korean law would be to argue under the Unfair Competition
PromotionPrevention Act that consumers were somehow being confused by the similarity (for example, that Daum Communications was thereby leading consumers to believe that Daum was an eBay affiliate or subsidiary).That requires the infringed mark to belong to a “well-known” company. eBay doesn’t trade here under its own name (its Korean subsidiaries are Internet Auction — which also has an eBay-inspired logo — and Gmarket); ergo, eBay is not “well-known” in Korea.
@13 Thank you for reminding me to ensure the new global version of our Korean company website is tested against something other than Explorer. I’m also fighting to keep the bizarre flashy distracting things off the home page… this battle is uphill for sure.
Back to the iPhone, I sure hope it has a functional navigation feature.
vince — I wouldn’t worry too much if I were you. Korean web designers’ work generally renders fine in Firefox and Safari, because the XHTML/CSS principles which swept the rest of the world around 2002 really haven’t taken root here in Korea. A table-based design usually is pretty portable, and Flash is identical cross-platform as well.
That doesn’t mean table-based design is smart, or “best practice” in any way. It’s not. But it’s the modern wave of semantic websites which use CSS for all their layout and design that require all the browser testing, and the work to correct for Internet Explorer’s bugs.
There are two idiotic things often done in Korea which can make websites nearly invisible to Google, which is how everyone outside Korea finds things (Koreans don’t use Google so they don’t think to take notice of it). The first is that Korean web coders seem to love to use HTML FRAME elements to hold subpages, which means that no interior pages of the site have an external-facing URL. This makes the site unindexable. And the use of Adobe’s Flash for navigational elements compounds things, because even if there are external-facing URLs, Google doesn’t index Flash — any links, then, which are accessed through a Flash program, are also invisible. No links to follow from the home page and that’s all, folks.
Googlebot stops cold after the first page of most Korean websites. Since the purpose of the site is to communicate with the world, make sure your firm isn’t doing those two stupid things.
You probably ought to make sure the site correctly sets its page encodings in Unicode UTF-8 rather than MS Code Page 949, the MS-Windows default encoding. Since only Korean Windows users are on that code page, an MS-949 website’s Korean text shows as gibberish to non-Korean visitors. UTF-8 renders well on all systems.
And for God’s sake, make sure that any Korean characters in the Flash that they use over your objections are embedded in the SWF. Simply assuming the user on the other side has those fonts will also result in your foreign visitors seeing gibberish instead of Korean.
Thank you Brendon. Your timing is impeccable. The designer was just here and we got him to commit to testing it out using Safari, Firefox and Chrome in addition to Explorer. I will forward the info you have provided to the PM and IT wrangler.
No. The purpose of “free trade agreements” is to establish mercantilism involving influential, politically connected industries in both countries.
America doesn’t really produce many consumer goods or manufacture much anymore, in contrast to countries like S. Korea, so to the average person trade visibly seems to be one sided. And the trade deficits reflect that effectively one of America’s major exports is financial paper, the dollar, promises, etc. Kind of like 16th century Spain exporting gold.
Iphone-wanting foreigners who are angry at the apparent inability of foreigners to get the iphone in Korea – put your rage on pause for a second. I just called KT and said something like, “I’m a foreigner, can I get me a shiny new iphone?” She said yes, but told me not to try to reserve one online, because I can’t. Rather, I can wait until the launch and just get one at the shop. –she thinks.
Maybe someone from Frisbee can drop by here and let us know whether their stores will be taking sign-ups from foreign purchasers of iPhone.
Yes, perhaps you could facilitate another Frisbee commercial post.
Hey man, I’m just trying to be helpful. It’s a good store for Apple customers and there are damn few of those here in Korea. There are the five Frisbee locations, the A-Sharp at COEX and the new Times Square, A-Life across the street from my office, and uh… Where else? I can’t think of any.
I contacted Frisbee and made my iPhone pre-order in English. Very smooth. No problem. I’m joining Brendon in recommending Frisbee, because I think expats should make a point to patronize local businesses that treat foreigners well.
“There are the five Frisbee locations, the A-Sharp at COEX and the new Times Square, A-Life across the street from my office, and uh… Where else? I can’t think of any.”
Shinsegae in Pusan, perhaps. But don’t quote me on that.
I forgot to add that I also think we should make formal complaints when we are discriminated against as foreigners. If I were in cmm’s shoes, I’d let Apple know immediately by phone and email.
#4 “Domestic Locating Technology”
Does the cleaning lady wander off that often you need a locating divice?
#17
A) Have you actually checked which one was first
B) Using the alphabet to spell your name. Yep reaks of trademark infringement.
#18 —
“there was a time that no one here knew what an iPod was and when they did arrive and locals and exapts started to throw cash around in those stores, newspapers went on and on about how, yes iPods were okay, but Korean products were better.”
No. Koreans knew what iPods were, and the market was saturated already. Korea was the first country to adopt MP3 players as a common consumer electronics item, so when the first iPod came out, the market was very different here. Not to mention the iPod’s biggest problems: 1) it was a huge brick, and 2) the bang-for-the-buck factor didn’t beat the local market.
When the Nano was announced, I predicted that the time had come. And it did — iPods went from 2% market share to 17% within a single year. The size had gotten small enough to hang around a Korea woman’s neck, the new design aesthetic had different colors and accessories (which the Korean domestic players had already had), and the bang-for-the-buck factor had shifted in Apple’s direction, since Samsung was charging Apple less for its memory chips since Apple was buying so much in bulk.
The market here is logical. Koreans know the sex appeal and design aesthetics of Apple products and iPods. Even Macs. People knew of their association with “cool” — but they also cost 3 times more than any similar computer thanks to the abominable practice of the Elex computer company that was Apple’s reseller in Korea. They’re almost single-handedly responsible for Apple’s complete lack of penetration into this market, since a Mac Classic cost like $3000 here. Koreans know how to do that kind of math. Buy PC.
But when the economics changed, so did buying practices. Now, it’s not uncommon to see Macs, especially around students. That’s because Apple Korea told Elex to go take a flying fuck in 2001 (I believe?) and reset the prices to not much more above US prices (VAT still inflates it a bit, but it’s still not more than around a $200 difference at the low end). And since Macs also run Windoze, it made more sense to buy Macs. And now, I see a lot of them these days, although it’s certainly still an underdog here. But still, Nate now makes a Mac version, Wibro is set up for them, more web sites are non-PC friendly.
And when iPods went from price/weight liability to the plus side, people were finally able to justify paying for the Apple sexy.
And the same will be true for the iPhones, which are simply better than the copycat crap that the Korean consumer was stuck with for the last few years. My friend just signed up tonight for a 32gig, white version of the iPhone for 65,000 won monthly service basic (24 month contract) and paying 11,000 per month for the phone, for a total of 264,000 won over the two years.
Koreans will do the math. Apps, plus the OS, plus the entire user experience being better than the Craptic, plus the fact that I think it’s high time Korea opened an iTunes store here and links content to the iPhone. On top of the fact that Koreans, tending to be conspicious consumers, definitely crave the Apple sexy.
People are going to be dropping their Craptics and other phones and the iPhone will be selling off the shelves, with long waiting lists throughout the first year. And there won’t be enough to go around for the Christmas season. They won’t be able to MAKE enough iPhones once Koreans start showing them off to their friends, people realize what a RIP Korean smartphones have been, and then there’s the price tag again. $600 for a Craptic? Or essentially nothing (11,000 a month layaway!) for Apple sexy?
And then, further connectability with other services, from Twitter to Facebook, to Apps that will certain grow to connect to Korean ones?
Dude. The iPhone is going to tsunami the competition, and this isn’t just a market “ready” for the product. This is a population that’s been SALIVATING for it. For whatever problems and gripes Koreans WILL have at launch, they’re still going to sell like hoddeok on a snow day.
iDontCare
Over a year ago I knew the iPhone would be an issue for Korean electronics companies…
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/.....nce-again/
However, I do take issue with Metro absolutely gushing about the iPhone’s apparent dominance in the handset industry. He reminds me of one of those Cult of Apple™ Techno Zombies here in the states that thinks anything from Apple is the best thing since sliced bread.
Personally, I hope nobody dominates a particular industry. Industry dominance gives us inefficient markets and crapola products like Windows Vista (and it’s hastily dressed-up sister Windows 7). I hope Nokia and Samsung figure out the smart phone market so they can come out with products that can better compete with the iPhone. It’s good to have alternatives, otherwise the industry dominate player get’s complacent. If that happens it’s consumers, at the end of the day, that ultimately suffer.
For those of you in Korea that don’t know, but the iPhone has been the subject of quite a bit of parody from people who don’t appreciate the Cult of Apple™ (or think that is it ridiculous).
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1766423
This particular app might be especially popular in the land that originated this reality TV show…
http://www.stevenhumour.com/20.....pp-parody/
The problem with chasing the leader is that the chaser becomes a follower. When is Samsung or LG going to develop the game changer? Do Korean engineers and designers have to move to California if they want to create breakthrough products and services?
While Marmot posters from New Jersey may not care about the iphone debut in Korea, those of us living here have been waiting years to try it out. I wish Korea lived up to the promise of being a cutting edge consumer electronics haven and that we had products here that were enviable… anyone want to buy my WIFI capable, lightly used Nurian Z1?
As far as I can tell, most Koreans are still stuck sending text messages to each other like drug dealers and most companies still haven’t adopted basic tools such as online, networked calendar systems (eg. Lotus Notes). Cutting edge consumer electronics technology here is reserved for teenage entertainment, and this is one reason Korean efficiency lags.
Do you have any data on Korean efficiency lagging?
I would like to add about the Ebay/Daum trademark in addition to Brendon’s excellent observations that Korean law enforcement and courts do not deal well with “design elements” that are the crux of the similarity here (colors, layout, etc.). For example look at how Starbucks/Starpreya ended up.
There is one aspect worth thinking about perhaps. When I moved to Korea ten years ago Daum had a different logo (as I recall a bar was under the “u”, or something, the letters over-lapped, and the colors were faded pastels). If Ebay was able to prove fame of its mark in Korea before that change over, if my memory is correct, they might have a case. The extra time, particularly since Daum’s change was after they took a stake in Auction.co.kr, might be an advantage. However as Brendon said, proving fame in Korea for foreign company not doing direct business in Korea is very difficult, if not close to impossible.
As far as the ultimate fate of the iPhone, something tells me it is going to be no different than the rest of the world. Apple will have a respectable 10-15% market share, with a large share in the young upwardly-mobile demo. It is likely to be a result that makes everyone happy. Apple gets their pennies to rub together, and Korean handset makers can crow about beating Apple. Given the size of LG and Samsung in the market, doubt any of them will end up as Reigncom (iRiver). Panatech or Curitel though may be a casualty as LG and Samsung try to muscle in on their low-end business to make up what they lost to the iPhone.
I got a good chuckle at the dropping of “iRiver”. I remember back in 2002?-3? when CNN-Global did one of their special focus weeks on Korea. A tent-pole in the coverage was Reigncom and its uber-confidence of eating up the global MP3 market with their strong dominance in Korea. CNN replayed that thing as special and then as a bumper between programs for a year or so. Then the iPod came to Korea.
#33, if only Koreans used twitter or facebook. I mean some do, but come on…
urPoor
Just razzing you Brendon, I like the Frisbee stores too, and I’m not even a Mac fan.
There is a new Apple computer store being outfitted in Star City by Konkuk University, Gwangjin-Gu, which I think is a Frisbee (?).
Had to try it for myself and was informed by KT that foreigners are excluded from ordering over the website. We have to go to a store a couple weeks from now.
Yes, there is a new Frisbee computer store in the Lotte building next to Star City by Konkuk University, Gwangjin-Gu, which opened a week ago.
This newly-opened Frisbee store is accessible on Subway lines 2 & 7 at the Konkuk University Station; here’s the page for the store. Anyone interested to know where the other six stores are located nationwide can visit the Frisbee web site at http://www.frisbeekorea.com and visit its English-language locator map.
Oh Brendon, if you have a moment, is there some reason why Back to My iPhone (from MobileMe) is not available on my iPhone? Is the service not available in Korea?
No idea. I’m sure there’s some stupid regulation here that’s blocking things.
If I had to make a guess, I’d guess the Korea Communications Commission has some concern about protecting the privacy of the guy who stole your iPhone. Location service requires consent under Korean law, and the guy who stole your iPhone probably won’t give consent to be tracked — some horseshit like that, probably. But really I have no idea.
Thanks Brendon – not stolen, just taking precautions.
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