[Apple conquers Korea] iPhone 4 Pre-Orders Halts Korean Mobile Service Carrier...

Kushibo notes: 

KT's online ordering site for the iPhone 4 ground to a halt today. Apple and KT representatives assumed it was due to 70,000 people ordering the beloved smartphone, but it turns out it was a roving band of bored netizens randomly taking down a website in protest over Apolo Ohno existing on the planet.

Earlier, I commented on how years of South Korean government protection for the mobile phone market did not lead to the emergence of a  widely adopted mobile platform. I'm guessing South Korean telecom providers' reluctance to accept a phone that made use of WiFi, which had been a solid money making stream also comes to play here. 

But, to note how South Korean government protection -- by adopting a CDMA standard -- led to the emergence of globally competitive cellphone manufacturers, one needs to look no further than how well Motorola has done up until I believer very, very recently. They hold probably a fifth of the cellphone market in South Korea and I believe it's sales have for some time been larger than Samsung or recently dipped slightly below Samsung in, well, Samsung's "home" market. However, what is more interesting is a quick search on market share for cellular phones or mobile phones does not lead to a number of sites about hardware sales any more; all news now seems to focus on the market share of mobile operating systems...

[Japan & Korea Missing Another Generation?] What does Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS mean for Japan and Korea?

edit: for clarity, 07/18

It seems every other day or so, there's some article that compares the sales of Apple iPhones with Apple's iOS to that of smart phones powered by Google's Android.

Seth Weintraub at CNNMoney.com:

However, in phones, Google seems to have a winner on its hands. It will be hard for Apple to catch Android's numbers if the company can't even surpass their competitor's running weekly total at its yearly iPhone launch.

Anyways, I just ordered an iPhone 4 for my mother this past weekend and I'm sure in due time I'll have my hands one of my own as well -- preferably a white iPhone 4. And, no, white isn't a girl's color; it does require more maintenance though. But, anyways, as these articles continually compare sales, for some reason it reminds me of the original operating system war between Microsoft and Apple (and IBM among others) for personal computers. It seems Google is the Microsoft for phones this time around by commoditizing phones, whereas the Apple iOS is only on products with the Apple logo on it. (The best example here would be the Samsung Galaxy-S phone. The phone has the very same processoras that inside Apple's iPhone 4.)

But, unlike personal computers though, it seems the nice thing is that the apps for mobile platforms don't require all that much money to develop. So, regardless of which platform sells more the concern that my phone will become obsolete just isn't there. I guess this is something that is clearly in Apple's advantage as whereas Mac computer owners are stuck -- less so now than in years and decades before and particularly as Microsoft sells its Office productivity suite on Macs now -- with a much smaller choice of software, I doubt that the difference will be as noticeable if at all when Android powered phones inevitably leap frog Apple iPhone's in sales. So, as long as iPhones do keep selling, stories such as which phones powered by which platform really aren't that important with exception to the general trend that Microsoft's mobile platform seems to be dying.

What is interesting though is that once again it seems that Asian manufacturers are once again stuck manufacturing commodities again for another generation perhaps for perpetuity. Even if Microsoft's phone platform dies, Apple and Google seem to be marginalizing East Asian companies once again as chips, memory, LCD screens, flash memory, etc seem to just be nothing more than high tech commodities... I believe even Softbank -- the Japanese company that made a great deal of money by investing in Yahoo -- is profitting by selling iPhones in Japan. Of course, Research in Motion is Canadian and there's Symbian by Finland's Nokia.  

Japan and South Korea both had protected cell phone markets with super fast networks for quite some time now, but it seems the only types of companies that emerged to compete globally were hardware manufacturers. With exception to companies that catered to making cheap games and the like, where is the Japanese or Korean Apple or Google? Why isn't there one? It's all the more remarkable when considering that the United States has by far probably the most fragmented network -- competing CDMA and GSM networks -- deployed over an area that is very lightly populated compared with eitehr Europe or East Asia. With all the boasting about how consumers in Northeast Asia have for years been able to watch television or video chat on their phones, what has come of it?

[Apple Conquers South Korea] Also, it's time to sell your 3GS -- by Sunday

After several years of trying to protect the Korean market from the iPhone, the phone seems to have taken off. How do I know this? You know something has become huge if my aunt, who is the head Buddhist Monk at a temple in Seoul, Korea has purchased an iPhone. I also convinced my mother that it's time that she catches up with her friends and colleagues, who all have either an iPhone and Blackberry. I showed her the voice control features off the iPhone. For example, if you change the phone's voice command options to Korean, then you can literally say, "Call Mom" in Korean and then in Korean the iPhone says "Calling Mother" in Korean. Also, she liked the idea of being able to send and receive text messages in Korean and to other iPhone owners regardless of whether they are in South Korea or the United States as well as other features more commonly associated with smartphones.

Apparently, Apple has made it easy for me to show her how cool the iPhone is, but it was my job to show that she needed it. She agreed. She thinks it will be a good idea to bring both my younger brother and her  into an AT&T family plan. As a reward, I will be upgrading to the iPhone 4G.

Anyways, it seems to be the repeat of an innovative American company -- namely Microsoft -- turning the products of hi-tech Japanese companies into commodities (memory chips). By the way, I finally saw an iPad today at the Glendale Galleria  and, well, it looks pretty unbelievable. And, its sales also seem unbelievable considering that it seems like a very expensive toy.

But, the new iPhone is a different story. When I first got the iPhone it was nice in that I didn't have to carry around an iPod and a phone. It also functioned as my camera and a mini-computer in that I could browse the web and send e-mails without having to purchase a laptop, while having all the features of a traditional phone with the slick, cool Apple interface -- I can't stand the OS X when it comes to a using a computer though. So, the iPhone is something I've grown quite attached to and with a more powerful camera -- that has a flash and zoom feature -- and a better resolution, the iPhone 4G makes it a new must have for me. 

Used iPhone 3GSs seems to be going for $350-$400 on Craigslist at the moment, but I'd suggest selling it before Monday if you plan on upgrading to the iPhone 4G.