South Korea is home to 49 million people and just 2 years ago there were only 500,000 smartphone users in the country. This march that number went up to 10million and an announcement made last week puts that number close to 20.1 million, that is a huge increase in just over 6 months.
It is expected that the number of Smartphone users in Korea will shoot up to 30million in the first half of 2012 and to 40million by the end of next year.
Lee Sang-Hak director of Korea Communications commission’ telecommunications policy planning division said:
“We’ll likely exceed the US in terms of the percentage of smartphone users in the total population early next year,”
The Koreans didn’t get to experience Apple’s iPhone till 2009 because of restrictions imposed on the local market by regulators. iPhone immediately became a hit which was a red light for Korean mobile phone manufacturers Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics.
Just this year Samsung the world’s second larger mobile phone manufacturer over took the Smartphone market from Apple by shipping over 27 million units.
The Smartphone industry’s substantial growth can be linked to the fact that 95% of South Korean homes were linked to broadband internet with one of the world’s top internet speeds.