SEOUL, KOREA - The smartphone sales of Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics are hit hard by the Handset Distribution Improvement Act, a new law designed to prevent illegal subsidy competition, which took effect a week ago.
Since the introduction of the new law, Samsung and LG saw their daily smartphone sales fall by more than 20,000 units and 9,000 units, respectively.
According to the Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning on October 10, the nation’s three major telecom companies reported 178,000 cases of new mobile phone registration, mobile number portability and device upgrade requests during the period from October 1 to 7.
If applying the industrial practice of counting a holiday and a weekend as 0.7 day, the daily smartphone sales are estimated at about 28,500.Considering that the number of daily used phone subscription averages at about 3,000, the daily sales of new smartphones are estimated at about 25,000.
This figure is far lower than last month’s daily average of 64,000. Despite the decline in overall sales, the share of Samsung’s Galaxy smartphones increased as consumers showed preference towards top brand models.
