Friday 25 November 2011

iPhone 4S Sales Grinding To A Halt In South Korea    [ 25-11-2011 11:20 ]

Author: Irina Turina   Source: Korea Times via BGR     Translation by: Paul Smith     

Sales of Apple's latest iPhone, the 4S, have been pretty strong to say the least with 4 million sold in its first weekend. Pre-order sales in Hong Kong were completely sold out within 10 minutes.  However, there is at least one place on Earth where the iPhone 4S is not selling like hotcakes. South Korea.

The Korea Times is reporting that the iPhone 4S has so far only managed to muster up between 150,000-300,000 sales in South Korea so far. Now for those of you thinking that perhaps this is some sort of patriotic act of defiance against Apple for its lawsuits against Samsung, the reason behind the poor salers is said to be much simpler than that. People just aren't interested in it.

That's the story coming out of the Korea Times anyway, which is reporting that customers aren't happy with the battery issues that have plagued the 4S and the lack of 4G LTE support is also a big turn off for many South Korean customers. This poor view of the handset has also apparently changed the minds of those who were initially interested with several pre-orders having apparently been cancelled.

One of those to cancel a pre-order told the Korea Times:

I dropped my plan to buy the iPhone 4S. it's not wholly-new and also there are big problems relating to hardware-related issues. I am a big Apple fab. But I'm very disappointed by the uncompetitive iPhone 4S.

Uncompetitive? Well yes, at least in South Korea where the lack of 4G support is a major setback for the handset due to the desire amongst South Korean consumers for those faster speeds. As one mobile shop owner in South Korea explains:

The key point is how Korean carriers effectively manage LTE networks to attract more clients. Since LTE is new, there are also complaints about its quality. If LTE services do well, then more people will switch as carriers give more subsidies to customers who buy LTE smartphones.

So in short the iPhone 4S has little of interest for the majority of South Korean consumers. Even Siri, the 'killer' feature of the iPhone 4S isn't much of a draw since it doesn't support Korean. In effect Apple is trying to sell the iPhone 4 all over again.

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