South Korea ends July with 2 mln 5G subs, adds 850,000 5G users in August

South Korea reached 1.91 million 5G subscribers at 31 July. The country added 574,840 in July alone, Yonhap news agency reports, citing figures released by the Ministry of Science and ICT. The country’s three mobile operators SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus commercially launched 5G mobile networks on 3 April. At end-July, SK Telecom attracted 45.4 percent of South Korea’s 5G user base, followed by KT with 30.8 percent and LG Uplus with 23.8 percent, the Ministry said.

South Korea’s 5G user base increased by 500,000 for three consecutive months from May. 5G customer additions are estimated to have jumped to 850,000 in August, boosted by the launch of Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 5G smartphone on the local market. In August, Samsung announced that pre-orders for its Galaxy Note 10 smartphone topped 1 million units in South Korea. Domestic operators SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus started taking pre-orders for the device on 9 August. Samsung reached 1.3 million Galaxy Note 10 pre-orders, which represents a 2-fold increase from the total number of pre-orders received for the Galaxy Note 9 on the local market. 

SK Telecom recently announced it had passed the milestone of 1 million 5G subscribers in the first 140 days since the launch of its 5G network on 3 April. The company’s 5G subscribers account for more than 3.5 percent of SK Telecom’s total subscriber base of 28 million.