What happend to premium smartphone sales in South Korea?

A new report claims the latest flagships from Samsung, LG and Apple are seeing record-low sales in South Korea.

After the Galaxy S9 and iPhone X, LG G7 has also been confirmed to be a flop in Korea.

According to the mobile service provider, the G7 ThinQ series, which was launched in Korea on May 18, was sold 79,194 units for one month. Average daily sales volume is around 3000 units.
The G7 had cumulative sales of 42,000 units for eight days since its launch, but its sales volume has plummeted after that.
Some pointed out that the launch of the G7 ThinQ followed by series of products with similar features and designs such as Q7, Q7 Plus, V35 ThinQ (scheduled for July) was one of reasons for weak sales of G7 in Korea.

LG Electronics' smartphone sales manager said that it was very rare that the average daily sales volume of 3,000 units was reached in less than a month for premium phone.

As with the Galaxy S9 and iPhone X, mobile carriers and experts interpreted that the G7 could not overcome decreasing demand for premium smartphones as well.

According to the data obtained by ET News, Apple managed to shift just 475,000 units of the iPhone X via the major South Korean carriers over the course of its first four months, with a peak of 163,000 devices in December and a low of 70,000 in February. The latter figure of which is very weak when the lack of rival launches is taken into account over the tracking timeframe. Also, the total number of units over the period marks the lowest-ever sales figures for an iPhone launch in the country.

In regards to Samsung, the brand certainly faired better than Apple, managing to ship a total of 707,000 Galaxy S9 and S9+ units via carriers since the line’s March launch. However, despite the higher numbers, it’s worth noting that South Korea is the brand’s home country, a territory where its flagship devices tend to perform extremely well. Unfortunately for the giant, though, the sales of its new devices have also set a new record-low for the brand. In fact, for reference, last year’s Galaxy S8 line managed to ship a respectable 1 million units over the two-month period.

Coinciding with a number of previous reports, the cause of the weak demand is once again said to be the higher pricing of the new flagship devices, and the latest report goes on to warn that the slowing sales could potentially become a long-term trend in the premium smartphone market.