South Korean SK Telecom starts pre-orders for Galaxy S3

A model holds up Samsung’s Galaxy S3 smartphones at an SK Telecom outlet in Seoul, Monday. SK Telecom will start taking pre-orders for the handset, already a hot seller overseas, today.

/ Courtesy of SK Telecom

SK Telecom, Korea’s largest wireless service provider, announced Monday that it will start taking pre-orders for Samsung Electronicss Galaxy S3.

SK said that they will start taking pre-orders of the latest version of Samsung’s immensely popular smartphone the third-generation (3G) model today and for the long-term evolution (LTE) version later this month.

Direct sales will start this month for the 3G model and next month for LTE.

Pre-orders for a maximum 5,000 handsets of the 3G model will be taken from 10 a.m. at www.tworldshop.co.kr. Those pre-ordering will also have a six month guarantee for returns if they lose the device.

Both models will be priced at around 900,000 won, with the LTE version a little bit more expensive and supporting an additional digital media broadcasting (DMB).

For the 5.1 million SK telecom subscribers’ using the new handset’s predecessors Galaxy S and Galaxy S2 who wish to upgrade, the firm will offer subsidies of 100,000 and 240,000 won respectively.

“Only SK Telecom can afford to support two versions of the Galaxy S3,” said Jang Dong-hyun, SK Telecom’s director of marketing division. “From the know-how we have accumulated since we launched the Galaxy S two years ago, SK Telecom will provide a differentiated service (from our competitors) for our customers.”

The hot-selling touch-screen device has started sales earlier this month in 28 countries, with a company record breaking pre-order of 10 million handsets. The huge popularity worldwide is bringing high expectations from Korean consumers for the release of the phone.

Samsung is boasting its own quad-core processor (the same as in Europe), a 4.8 inch Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen, voice recognition system, and other high-tech features. The models in the United States carry Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 dual-processor.

KT, the second largest wireless service provider, announced Monday that it will also start taking pre-orders for the LTE version from today, while LG Uplus has not specified any date to do so.