Apple’s impact on South Korea is much larger than most fans will have anticipated.
Cupertino directly employs 500 workers of its own, and has created hundreds of thousands of jobs on Samsung’s home turf. Local App Store developers have earned a whopping 4.7 trillion won.
South Korea was ranked the world’s top digital city in 2007, and has produced some of the biggest technology companies on the planet — including Samsung, LG, and Apple chip-maker SK Hynix.
It’s not a country you might typically associate with Apple, but the iPhone-maker has had a huge impact there over the years, according to new figures published on its South Korean website.
Apple’s big impact on South Korea
Apple has created and supports more than 325,000 jobs in South Korea. More than 500 of those jobs are with Apple directly, and they include designers, marketing specialists, retail staff, and more.
Another 125,000 jobs are with local manufacturers, like SK Hynix, and product distributors. A whopping 200,000 jobs have been created by the wildly successful App Store.
Apple says that South Korean developers have earned 4.7 trillion won through the App Store since it opened its doors in 2008. That’s almost $4 billion at today’s exchange rate.
Of course, Apple has had an even bigger impact in the U.S., where it now supports 2.4 million jobs. The company is on track to directly contribute $350 billion to the U.S. economy by 2023.
Via: The Korea Herald
