South Korea used to be long dominated by three Korean handset vendors, Samsung, LG and Pantech, and one foreign vendor, Apple, based on our quarterly handset country tracker from HCST service.

However, the stringent handset subsidy regulation which took effective on October 1, 2014 has shaken up South Korean handset market, opening up some opportunity for overseas vendors to knock the doors on South Korea market again since many vendors including HTC, Motorola, Nokia and Blackberry left the Korean soil a few years back. 

Some handset vendors such as Huawei, Sony, Asus and TCL-Alcatel have started to sell their devices in South Korean market, partly thanks to this regulation, while Lenovo-Motorola is seeing some opportunity to launch its 6.8 inch device in Q4 2015 or Q1 2016.

The in-depth analysis on the impact from consumers / vendors / operators perspectives, which handset subsidy regulation has blew on South Korean handset market for a year is described at this insight report.