The South Korean government has put out the ‘welcome’ mat for Apple’s iPhone and other handset makers, dropping a long-standing demand that blocked foreign cell phones from the tech-saavy country.
The Korean Communications Commission said starting April 1 it will no longer require cell phone makers adopt the home-grown Korean Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability, or WAPI specification.
The rule, in place since 2005, had prevent Apple, RIM and others from competing against local handset makers. Samsung and LG now control 90 percent of the South Korean market.
The action leaves China as one of the last remaining markets demanding Apple adopt local technology in return for access to consumers. China’s government has asked cell phone makers use its locally-grown TD-SCDMA instead of internationally-approved 3G technology. In November, CEO of China Mobile said talks were still ongoing to bring the iPhone to the nation’s 600 million cell phone subscribers.
In order to enter the Egyptian market, Apple agreed to sell iPhones without GPS after the government voiced security concerns, the New York Times reported earlier this week.
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
