3GWeek - Asia’s Mobile News

What’s the story of Korea local phones in 2009? With the withdrawal of WIPI regulation on April 1, Korea market is prepared to handle the foreign products that will come soon. BlackBerry Bold has been announced to be available for SK Telecom, while iPhone is soon enough to be available there.

What’s the strategy of local manufacturers, Samsung, LG, and Pantech, on battling against them? Seems like 2009 will be the year of smartphones, touchscreen one or not. Samsung, after releasing T*OMNIA, the local version of big hit Omnia, is about to unveil the successor of Omnia. This successor is predicted to become all-in-one product, having PC thingy, PMP, camera, and more other features.

LG Electronics, in other hand, will launch more phones with multimedia features, such as games, music videos and other multimedia services. LG most likely will unveil another series of smartphones, probably will again use Windows Mobile.

Pantech, the third largest Korea manufacturer, said to have slimmer version of Presto. Beside that, Pantech is about to release 10 more of 3G handsets. I think next year will be a very interesting year for Korea’s local phone sales.

Source via Engadget Korea [translated]