IPhone Has Samsung, LG Sweating

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. According to latest industry figures, Samsung sold 720,000 handsets in the local market in November, accounting for 50 percent of the 1.45 million phones sold, which represented a 5.8 percent monthly increase. However, Samsung's performance represented a drop from its October numbers, when it controlled 56 percent of the handset market with 770,000 units sold. Industry watchers believe that Samsung's softer numbers are a direct result of the recent iPhone release. Samsung had controlled more than 70 percent of the country's sales of high-end handsets with full-touch screens, but with KT releasing the iPhone last Saturday, Korean wireless users were offered an intriguing alternative. Although KT isn't releasing exact figures, it is estimated that around 60,000 to 70,000 iPhones have been sold through Nov. 30, meaning that Apple's do-it-all smart phone needed just three days to gain a 5 percent market share and cement itself as the country's most popular imported premium phone. LG's 22.1 percent market share in November also represented a slight monthly drop, and the company has to be concerned that the iPhone craze might erode its demand for its new smart phone, ``Chocolate II.'' ``The presence of the iPhone is clearly reflected in the November sales figures and the numbers show that Apple has already caught up with Motorola as the fourth-largest vendor here,'' said a mobile industry official. IPhone vs T-Omnia II Although LG would like to suggest differently, the local smart phone wars seems to be bubbling down to a dual between the iPhone and T-Omnia II. Although the iPhone is generating more buzz, T-Omnia II is a hot item in its own right, despite its hefty price tag. SK Telecom currently has sold around 20,000 T-Omnia phones since its release last month, and the numbers are expected to rise by a sharper trajectory with the carrier providing larger handset subsidies to compete with the iPhone. Samsung claims that its flagship smart phone represents the superior hardware. T-Omnia II features a 3.7-inch active-matrix organic light-emitting diode (AMOLED) screen, which enables brighter and sharper images, and is also equipped with a 5-megapixel built-in camera, Wi-Fi, GPS and download speeds of 7.2 megabytes per second on third-generation (3G) high speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) networks.Samsung's handset is powered by an 800 megahertz (MHz) microprocessor that is stronger than the 640 MHz CPU of the iPhone 3GS. Another advantage of T-Omnia II is that it has a digital multimedia broadcasting (DMB) television tuner, while the iPhone doesn't support mobile television. The iPhone backers, on the other hand, fight back on the hardware arguments, claiming that the Apple's phone has the better display, despite all the talk from Samsung about AMOLED and its glamorous colors.The iPhone uses a capacitive touch screen, which relies on a layer of capacitive materials to hold an electronic charge and control the amount of charge on the specific point of contact. This allows quicker and more accurate movement than is capable on Samsung's touch-screen phones, which take the pressure-sensitive approach, experts say. The iPhone's screen also allows multi-touch functions, which Samsung has yet to support. The biggest advantage of the iPhone over Samsung's, and of any other smart phone for that matter, lies in the wealth of software, thanks to the success of Apple's App Store, its online applications store. Samsung has been gaining in its market share in the global mobile phone market, rising as the No. 2 handset vendor behind Nokia. However, the company has a smaller presence in the smart phone segment ruled by the iPhones and Blackberries of the world. Improvement in software is considered critical for Samsung to strengthen its presence in smart phones, which provide larger margins than conventional handsets. Samsung recently opened its own online applications store and is currently developing its own smart-phone operating system.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2009/12/123_56574.html