Apple’s iPhone

By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

KTF is optimistic that it will sell Apple's best-selling mobile phone iPhone in South Korea next year with help from its Japanese partner NTT Docomo.

Apple is taking the initiative in the negotiation of giving the rights to sell the iPhone in Korea like it did in talks with European telecom firms, but KTF is still confident that it will be the Korean distributor, the firm's chief strategy officer said.

``We want to (sell it in Korea), but Steve Jobs has been playing hard (in the negotiation),'' Kim Yeon-hak, executive vice president, said on Thursday. ``It's difficult (to win the contract) because the size of the Korean market is small. But someday we will do it, using our relationship with NTT Docomo.''

Throughout the year, KTF has been openly wanting to get the exclusive rights to service the iPhone on its network. In August, KTF's chief executive officer Cho Young-chu said that he was waiting for the decision of Jobs, the founder and CEO of Apple.

Apple's Korean branch has remained quiet as usual, saying it cannot comment on ongoing business contracts. The company has stated that it will sell the iPhone in Asia sometime next year but did not specify which country.

KTF has close ties with NTT Docomo, the largest mobile operator in Japan _ NTT Docomo is the second largest shareholder of KTF with a 10.31 percent share. The two companies also co-invested $200 million in Malaysia this month to buy a 33 percent share of local mobile operator U Mobile.

Apple is reportedly weighing between NTT Docomo and Softbank, the third largest operator in Japan, for the iPhone deal. NTT Docomo's executives including Masao Najamura, the chief executive, have been meeting with Jobs in recent months.

The iPhone has been a massive hit in North America since its launch last summer. Apple shipped some 1.4 million iPhones, which is selling for $399 in the United States, in the first three months since its release.

But cynics point out that it hasn't been as successful in Europe as in North America, and may be even less popular in Japan and in South Korea where the phone markets are already flooding with high-tech handsets that can play music, show TV broadcastings and allow face-to-face video calls. Apple also has to remodel the iPhone to fit to the Korean mobile network standard, which can push up the price of the iPhone here.

Korea's regulations on telecom devices are another hurdle for iPhone's local debut. The government enforces mobile phones to carry a Korean-developed software platform called WIPI. Technical difficulties in making phones work on the WIPI system has frustrated other major foreign makers such as Nokia and Research In Motion, the maker of the Blackberry smartphone, in selling their products in Korea.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr