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...
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