Foreign Mobile Makers to Sell Old Models
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Foreign mobile-phone makers are aiming for a bigger slice of the Korean market with the country retiring its homemade standard specifications for data-enabled handsets in April.
However, it warrants further watching whether the products from the likes of Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Apple will shake the local hierarchy dominated by Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, as many of the foreign venders are relying on dated or watered-down models in luring Korean customers.
``It would be hard to expect foreign companies to introduce products that are tailored for Korean customers, considering the size of the market, and it would obviously be a risk to try new and unproven products here,'' said an official from KTF, the country's No.2 mobile operator that remains in talks with Apple over the release of the globally popular iPhone 3G.
``Foreign phones will enable us to diversify our handset offerings, but aside of the immensely hyped iPhone, it's hard to pick another foreign phone that has a chance to become a true difference-maker here,'' he said.
Samsung and LG combine for nearly 80 percent of the handsets sales here, protected by the local software standard WIPI, short for wireless Internet platform for interoperability, that had been mandated for data-enabled handsets since 2005.
This has blocked most foreign electronics makers from making inroads here, aside of a few exceptions, such as Motorola and Casio, as it made little business sense for them to produce WIPI-enabled handsets only for the Korean market.
However, with the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's broadcasting and telecommunications regulator, deciding to lift the WIPI requirements last year, the foreign companies are now getting a fair shot at the Samsung-LG duopoly.
The latest foreign vendor to release its product here is Taiwan's HTC, which introduced its Touch Diamond smart phone last month through SK Telecom, the country's biggest mobile-phone operator.
HTC also released its Touch Dual handset through SK Telecom last summer, and the wireless carrier will add Sony Ericsson's Xperia in its handset lineup this month.
Canada's Research In Motion (RIM) has sold more than 1,000 of its Blackberry Bold handsets through SK Telecom since its release earlier this year, company officials said.
Also in the game is Nokia, the world's biggest mobile-phone vendor, which plans to debut its 6210 Navigator handset to SK Telecom and KTF by the end of the month.
The smart-phones currently in the market are available only for business users, a market segment that the government allowed to be exempted from the WIPI requirements.
However, the gloves are expected to really come off in April when the foreign companies will be able to pitch their products to a wider range of consumers.
Garnering rapt attention is iPhone, the now-iconic handset that Korean gadget lovers had been waiting to get their hands on for years.
SK Telecom and KTF are both engaged in talks with Apple, while LG Telecom, the smallest wireless carrier, plans to counter by sourcing a handset powered by the Google-backed Android operating system.
However, it remains to be seen whether the lifting of the WIPI requirements will give foreign vendors a license to print money here. Most of the handsets released in Korea, including Touch Diamond, Navigator and Xperia, are more than a year after from their global debut, and it's questionable how much excitement they could create among demanding Korean consumers, who have grown accustomed to being pitched new models every six months.
And many of the handsets sold here will be missing key capabilities that made them popular elsewhere, due to local regulations and the business interests of local carriers.
Nokia's Navigator will fail to live up to its name here, as the Korean version of the handset will be stripped of its digital mapping capabilities, due to the local laws that ban digital map data to be exported overseas. The Finnish handset maker has refused to establish a separate server in Korea to provide the location-based services.
And despite their advanced data capabilities, many of the foreign handsets will come without Wi-Fi ability, as local carriers would rather have users relying on their more expensive wireless Internet services instead.
Although Korean consumers have been hoping that the influx of foreign handsets would increase their choice in affordable phones, the plummet of the Korean won makes this no sure thing as well, as operators are now forced to spend more money in securing the handset supplies.