(The Korea Herald) Phone salesperson Lee Geon-seok said he has been so busy with customers hoping to buy the newly released iPhone that he has not had time to eat.

He said iPhone sales reached 100 units per day at his two KT stores, accounting for around 80 percent of total handset sales there. “It’s a war. iPhone sales are explosive,” Lee told The Korea Herald.

He said his store is running short of iPhones because of strong demand. Korean customers snapped up 70,000 iPhones as of Sunday – just eight days after its release in Korea, according to a KT spokesperson.

This is rare in the Korean handset market, which has been dominated by Samsung and LG. Global handset makers such as Nokia and Sony Ericsson have posted poor sales here.

It remains to be seen whether the initial strong sales of Apple’s iPhone, driven by pent-up demand, will continue. But for now, the small gadget is rattling the country’s mobile market.

The iPhone launch appears to have hit LG harder than Samsung. Sales of LG’s flagship phone Chocolate slumped this month, and the company has few competitive smartphone models.

“Sales of the Chocolate phone are meager,” a KT spokesperson said yesterday, without giving the figure.

Top mobile carrier SK Telecom also said yesterday daily sales of the Chocolate slumped to 250 units this month, from 400 units last month.

This contrasts with Samsung’s new smartphone Omina 2, whose daily sales reached a whopping 5,000 units per day this month, SK said. SK Telecom, which does not offer the iPhone, sharply increased its subsidies for Omnia 2, to stave off the challenge from the iPhone.

The iPhone, which is offered exclusively via second-ranked KT, also posted 5,000 units of daily sales this month, according to a local report yesterday. – read more at The Korea Herald…

Apple's iPhone is a big hit in its first week of release in South Korea

By Kim Tong-hyung, Staff Reporter (The Korea Times) – Samsung Electronics and Apple are about to duke it out in Korea’s emerging “smart” phone market, and it looks like local Internet company, Daum (www.daum.net), will have a role in settling the bragging rights.

Daum, which operates the eponymous Web portal that trails only Naver (www.naver.com) in online traffic, is having all of its 1,000 employees choose between the newly released Apple iPhone and Samsung’s flagship smart phone, T-Omnia II, in the company’s free phone program.

Daum is desperate to get ahead in mobile Internet services, and by providing data-enabled handsets to employees for free and paying for their data expenses for the first two years, the company is looking to source innovation in-house.

It remains to be seen which between the iPhone and T-Omnia II end up as the phone of choice for Daum employees, and Samsung seems eager to advise them on their happy headache.

According to Daum officials, Samsung sent sales personnel to Daum’s Seoul headquarters to convince the company’s employees that T-Omnia II represents the better device.

The iPhone is released by KT, the country’s second-biggest mobile operator, while T-Omnia II is pitched by SK Telecom, the top wireless carrier that has a 50-percent-plus market share.

“We thought we were getting iPhones at first, but with T-Omnia II later becoming an option, there are more things to think about,” said a Daum employee.

“In the past few years, we have been putting much emphasis on delivering mobile Internet services and Apple’s mobile Internet devices, such as the iPhone and iPod Touch, were greatly considered when we developed new applications. So there has been a buzz in anticipation of an iPhone release among us for years, but you would have to say that T-Omnia II is an impressive device in its own right.”

Although it would be over-the-top to call the event the “Judgment of Daum,” it is easy to understand why the normally unflappable Samsung is touchy about the results.

Less than a week after its release, iPhones are flying off Korean shelves and showing promise to shake the hierarchy of the local handset market where Samsung and its bitter industry rival, LG Electronics, have been enjoying a near-duopoly. – read more at The Korea Times…