iPhone 4S vs. Galaxy Nexus: iPhone 4S Loses Sales Momentum in Korea

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Apple’s iPhone 4S proved to  be a hit among smartphone users, as Apple posted record iPhone sales after the dual-core and speech-recognition enabled smartphone launched in October. But as sales figures are soaring elsewhere, Apple is losing steam in South Korea, home of one of its strongest competitors, Samsung.

The Korea Times reports that Apple might not be doing well in the country, amid earlier reports that the iPhone has been getting record numbers in terms of pre-orders. In a country known for having one of the fastest mobile broadband speeds in the world, consumers are opting to skip the iPhone 4S in favor of handsets that support 4G or LTE in the country.

Apple’s authorized iPhone carriers in the country — SK Telecom and KT — are reporting order cancellations. Meanwhile, the earlier cited pre-order figures of 300,000 units when the iPhone 4S launched has been adjusted to 150,000. The pre-order sales figures had actually been bloated due to carrier policy of limiting the number of iPhone 4S units a subscriber can purchase per network, which resulted in pre-orders from multiple carriers per person. “The actual sales were below 150,000. As people made pre-orders with both SK Telecom and KT, as well as a certain local carrier’s policy to allow one customer to order a maximum three of the iPhone 4S, the numbers were out of control,” a representative said.

Both companies will start retail sales of the iPhone 4S this weekend ahead of earlier schedules, in an effort to meet Apple-stipulated sales targets. However, consumers are fazed with worldwide reports of the iPhone 4S not meeting expectations, particularly with bugs relating to battery life, security and even Siri itself.

Still, Apple is not a net loser here. Some users are reportedly holding out on purchasing the iPhone 4S and saving up for an iPhone 5, which is rumored to be out by 2012. This is the sentiment among existing iPhone 4 users, who don’t see any major upgrade, except for Siri, which doesn’t support the Korean language anyway. Consumers in the region are likely to be on the lookout for a major upgrade rather than incremental feature additions.