Submitted by Bob Bhatnagar on
Overwhelming demand for the iPhone 4 took down Korea Telecom (KT) servers during the launch of pre-ordering and resulted in 130,000 units sold in just 13 hours. The device will ship and hit shelves at 2,900 KT stores nationwide in September. Pre-ordering began at 6:00 AM local time, with the first 100k units sold by the end of lunch hour.
In contrast, the iPhone 3GS sold 60,000 units over five days in South Korea when it launched in December 2009. KT is the second largest wireless provider in the country, and although the company increased its web server capacity they did not expect demand to be so strong. Web ordering went down intermittently throughout the day, with traffic swamping the available bandwidth. AT&T and Apple had similar issues with pre-ordering in the US this June.
When the iPhone 4 launched in the US, France, Germany, Japan and the UK, over 600,000 pre-orders were processed on the first day. Many interested parties couldn't communicate with AT&T servers and were surprised to find that pre-ordering was later suspended. The current wait time for an iPhone 4 in the US is three weeks and the white model iPhone 4 has yet to be released.
Apple has sold 850,000 iPhone 3GS models in South Korea since the December launch. Local company Samsung sells what is probably the closest competition to the iPhone in the Galaxy S, which launched in the country two months ago. So far Samsung has reported Galaxy S sales totaling 800,000 in South Korea.
KT originally planned to launch the iPhone 4 on June 30, however government regulatory issues delayed the launch. The iPhone 4 is expected to be available in a whopping 87 countries by September, only three months after initial distribution began.
Comments
Linda replied on Permalink
10,000 devices sold per *HOUR*?????
That iPhone must really be a horrible product, and hated by everyone!
Max replied on Permalink
Perhaps it's my first and last comment on this website(no hate or what ever u may call it but simply i can't enjoy "i" products).
Is that so?!
"Local company Samsung sells what is probably the closest competition to the iPhone in the Galaxy S, which launched in the country two months ago. So far Samsung has reported Galaxy S sales totaling 800,000 in South Korea."
Actually this "local" company is the second largest mobile phone maker in the world and currently producing 98% of AMOLED technology displays in the market.personally never considered to downsize Apple's successes with it's "i" gadgets but after reading quoted part of article and proved not only Steve Jobs and majority of company executives but those named their selves iPhone fans can't accept the truth and with involving(from that damn reception mayhem to this poor and low article editing)others all of you hardly trying to hide stupidest design flaw of entire consumer electronics industry in 2010.
Several components of Apple products are(and will)provided by Samsung and other components produced by other "local" company of South Korea,LG Elc.
Just open up iPad case and count how many are attached Made by Samsung or LG.
iPhone's closest rival is currently control 22%+- of Mobile phone market share world wide,that's huge,isn't it? specially for a company that in 2001 it's market share was under 4%,of course you can't admit that because you denied the truth in daylight once when customers reporting drop calls and you were busy making something out of other manufacturers devices and just to say those videos and overall excuses was one of dumbest in related marketing strategies!
After pointing fingers at others only more shame and fail granted nothing more.to say goodbye and tell you how much i'm going to miss you all i think it's worth to review EISA Awards 2010 one more time:
European SmartPhone 2010-2011 Award : Samsung I9000 Galaxy S
European Mobile Phone 2010-2011 Award : SonyEricsson XPERIA X10 mini
European Social Media Phone 2010-2011 Award : Samsung S8500 Wave
European Headphone 2010-2011 Award : Beyerdynamic T 50p
European Portable Navigation Device 2010-2011 Award : Garmin Nuvi 3790t
European Tablet 2010-2011 Award : Apple iPad
European Green Phone 2010-2011 Award : LG GD510 pop.
It seems I9000 Galaxy S can't be matched by any of it's rivals(those one inch far and those hundreds of miles far)more sadly is the iPhone 3GS which last year awarded as the SmartPhone of the year but successor failed to repeat those old good days.