A particularly unfortunate timing will ruin the Galaxy S5's April 11th launch party for South Korea's three major telecoms. Apparently, the local government is angry at SK Telecom, Korea Telecom (KT), and LG U+ for illegally subsiding smartphones with more than the limit of $249 (270 000 won) allows. To punish the misbehaving carriers, officials will enforce a country-wide ban, which will render them unable to sell or upgrade smartphones for different periods between March 13 and May 19. More precisely, SK Telecom will be off the grid between April 5 and May 19, KT will be banned from March 12 to April 26, and LG U+, the smallest of the three, won't be selling smartphones between March 13 and April 4, and between April 27 and May 18.
This arrangement puts the carriers in awkward positions, to say the least. SK Telecom and KT have completely lost the opportunity to benefit from early Galaxy S5 sales, while LG U+ will have about two weeks to sell as much units as it can, before it's forced to close up shop until May. In the meantime, the three are expected to stock up on Samsung's flagship, which means the vendor will manage to move a respectable amount of stock regardless of the situation.
Analyst Jeronimo Franco from IDC expects that the punishment will only cause a short-term disturbance in the Galaxy S5's sales, and isn't likely to inflict unfair damage to Samsung, as smartphones from competing vendors won't be available either. He acknowledged that the Galaxy S5's postponed launch will impact its momentum in South Korea, which is the fifth biggest market for Samsung, but doesn't think that the delay will reflect on the S5's overall success. Indeed, with the smartphone launching in 150 countries, we're sure Sammy will have plenty of opportunities to boast about strong launch day sales.
source: The Guardian via Phonearena
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