Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Don't quote the KT. It'll just make them think they're a quality paper.

For news on the next generation of the iPhone (not the 3Gs but the 4G), the San Francisco Chronicle — which covers Apple's backyard — is quoting, of all sources, the Korea Times:
Those check boxes on your iPhone wish list? The latest rumor says a few of them are covered in the next-generation iPhone.

Korea Times quotes unnamed, high-ranking executives at KT, Apple's exclusive local partner in South Korea, as saying the iPhone 4G will have an OLED screen, support video chat and -- perhaps most surprisingly -- have a removable battery. It'll also reportedly have a dual-core processor, more powerful graphics and an improved camera. The officials say that KT's corporate clients will get the new phones in April as a "litmus test" before they're provided to local distributors in June.
Well, I guess this is plausible. After all, the iPhone has been doing extremely well since it was finally introduced into Korea, so there's good reason to believe that the market for a 4G phone would also be robust. Furthermore, South Korean cell phone consumers tend to have high expectations and strong opinions about such technology, so if there's something amiss with the new iPhone, the Korean market will sniff it out.

All in all, a smart move on the part of Apple, if the Korea Times story is true, though it would be weird that they have the scoop.

All this assumes that the 4G network is strong in Korea, about which I have no idea whatsoever. Anyone?

4 comments:

  1. Macworld, Pravda,PC World and a few other news sources are jumping with the KT article. I wonder if Apple will confirm this or deny it.

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  2. Oh for God's sake! It's just an old rumor from early last year. Someone probably just googled "iphone 4g" and took the rumor as something more, without checking it.

    Shame on western outlets following this!

    http://gizmodo.com/5145151/iphone-4g-concept-is-a-macbook-in-a-phone

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  3. It's worth noting that the "4G" in the name refers to the 4th generation of iPhone, not compatibility with "4G" networks.

    4G isn't even completely standardized yet. Though, it's likely that Korea will be well-positioned for it as the 4G standard is likely be derived from WiMAX. WiMAX is big in Korea, marketed mostly by KT as "WiBro".

    Luckily, most western sources mentioning this load of crap are blogs. Even news outlets mentioning it have only done so on their blogs thus far, rather than in print.

    I wonder if they know that they are citing news from the same paper that republished an article from the Weekly World News last month?

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  4. Also, Apple will neither confirm, nor deny the rumors - they never do.

    But, if it has any shred of truth, they will surely try to unleash some minor hell on whoever originally spilled the beans.

    I can't reach the Korea Times article right now, but it looks like the TRUE original source of the rumors was ETNews.
    http://www.telecomskorea.com/smatphone-8689.html

    Amazing that the list on Gizmodo is almost EXACTLY what they listed in the "new" rumors. Seems to be about on par with Korea news outlets at this point ...

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