In the latest sign of a rebound in the Korean economy, PC and mobile phone handset sales have returned to pre-economic-crisis levels. PC sales during the first half of this year were up 70% year-on-year to 890,000 units, with Samsung Electronics Co the domestic market leader with a share of 39.3% or 350,000 PCs. Trigem was next with 160,000 PCs or 18% of the market, followed by LG-IBM PC Co and Daewoo Telecom Co with about 100,000 units or around 11% each.
Low-priced PCs with an average retail price of about 1m won ($835) were the best-selling items but expensive notebook PCs were also popular in a price range from $2,500 to more than $8,000. The mobile phone handset market experienced 50% growth with sales topping 6.62 million units and Samsung again being the market leader with 3.45 million mobile phones sold.
