On May 25, 2017, South Korea’s Constitutional Court ruled that a law imposing a cap on handset subsidies, offered by the country’s mobile operators, is legitimate. This regulation was introduced two and a half years ago when Mobile Device Distribution Improvement Act went into effect in South Korea on October 1st, 2014, and the foremost purpose of this regulation was to get rid of excessive subsidy competition by eradicating irregular subsidies, and to make all handset buyers spend a fair amount of money in buying the phones.

Irrespective of the court ruling last week, this regulation was supposed to get expired in September this year after three years of validation. However, it appears that this handset subsidy cap is highly likely to be expired earlier than expected, mostly due to weaker effects than originally anticipated, believed to be favoring local operators rather than actual buyers.

The South Korea's handset market situation after this handset subsidy regulation can be viewed at this report, published under Handset Country Share Tracker (HCST) service, in which we track the handset volume in South Korea.