 South Korean firms prepare to fight Apple onslaught Seoul, South Korea (AFP) Aug 26, 2010 - South Korean firms said Thursday they would soon release tablet PCs to contend with the imminent arrival of Apple's iPad after the roaring success of the American firm's smartphones. Top mobile phone operator SK Telecom said it would launch the Galaxy Tab, a seven-inch touchscreen tablet from Samsung Electronics that is smaller than the 9.7-inch iPad. "We are aiming for a September release. We are also considering diverse tablet PCs at the moment," SK spokesman Kim Dae-Woong told AFP, adding that pricing and the exact release date had still to be decided. Global computer and handset makers have scurried to respond to the success of Apple's tablet PCs, released in April. The US company sold more than three million iPads within less than three months of the product's release. Apple's local distributor, KT Corp, said it had been in talks with the US company to offer the iPad in South Korea. Spokesman Lee In-Won said the release could be around early September. The Galaxy Tab will be unveiled on September 2 at a trade show in Germany. Its local rival, LG Electronics, has promised to release an Android-based tablet PC before December. Tablet PCs feature bigger screens than smartphones and have no keyboards, instead employing touchscreens or stylus pens as input devices. Apple distributor KT plans to introduce a low-end tablet PC before bringing the iPad into the tech-savvy country. KT said it had sold one million iPhones, including about 880,000 of the iPhone 3 and 3GS, since their debut nine months earlier. It has also received 212,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4, reflecting its "through-the-roof popularity", spokesman Jin Byung-Kwon said. South Korea's mobile phone market is one of the world's most vibrant, with 45 million users in a population of 49 million. But smartphones have a relatively small share, implying huge growth potential. Since its launch in June, Samsung has sold more than 900,000 Galaxy S smartphones. |
In its usual cryptic style, Apple sent out email invitations revealing little more than the place and time of the event, which will be held in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in downtown San Francisco.
"It is time for the iPod Touch update," said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley. "They tend to refresh the iPod now. The only thing that is heavy speculation is if they will mention Apple TV."
Apple traditionally rolls out improvements to its iPod line in September to position the trend-setting portable media players for the year-end holiday shopping season.
The event invitation features a large picture of an acoustic guitar, seen as another clue that the theme will be iPod and Apple's online shop iTunes.
The iPod Touch was expected to be upgraded to get "pretty much everything" the latest generation of the iPhone has except the radio signal, according to Enderle.
Features that the iPod Touch is expected to inherit from the iPhone 4 include video chat and a crisper resolution screen.
Analysts will be watching to see whether Apple responds to a move by Internet giant Google to expand its kingdom to the living room with an ambitious new service that lets people mesh television viewing with surfing.
"Google TV," developed in partnership with technology titans Sony, Intel and Logitech, fuses the freedom of the Internet with television programming.
Google executives vowed their TV platform will succeed where offerings such as Apple TV have foundered.
Google TV, which is powered by Google's Android software and Chrome Web browser, can be accessed using upcoming Web-enabled televisions from Sony or set-top boxes from Logitech that route Web content to existing TV sets.
Sony and Logitech said the sets and boxes will be available in the United States in time for the year-end holiday shopping season and be rolled out internationally next year.
Apple in 2007 released the first version of its digital media receiver that routes video, film, or television shows from computers to high-definition televisions but the company still refers to the devices as "a hobby."
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