The iPhone X may have greater levels of availability in Apple Stores than many predicted, but there’s one place you’ll struggle to get your hands on one: South Korea.
According to a new report, Samsung’s home turf experienced a massive surge of orders for the iPhone X when it was made available for pre-order, ahead of its November 24 launch. In total, the allocated iPhone X shipments for the country sold out within minutes.
Leading mobile carrier SK Telecom said it sold all of its allocated iPhone X phones in three minutes, compared to 20 minutes for the iPhone 7 last year. In particular, the silver iPhone X sold out in just one minute.
Other carriers including KT Corp and LG Uplus also say they sold out of their pre-order iPhone X handsets within minutes. “The initial inventories were … too low to meet the demand,” an official from one mobile carrier said.
It appears that whoever divvied up the next-gen iPhone handsets misjudged demand in South Korea, where the iPhone X is considerably pricier than it is in the U.S. — with the entry level iPhone X retailing for $1,237 in a country where wages are also typically lower.
Industry watchers say the total number of iPhone X handsets for South Korea was 150,000, compared to more than 200,000 for the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus.
The high demand for the iPhone X is especially good news for Apple given that a lot of the South Korean tech press, which often favors its home-grown Samsung brand, has dedicated plenty of space to critizing the high price of the device — and even nonsensically suggested a recall of the devices could be carried out at one point.
Source: Yonhap News
