If you are interested in mobile technology, then it is no secret that South Korea is one of those perfect storm locations for the industry. This is largely due to the fact that there is not one, but two tech giants based and located in South Korea. These are, of course, LG and Samsung. Not only are they the two biggest smartphone manufacturers in South Korea, but they are also two of the biggest in the world, with Samsung still retaining the title of largest android manufacturer overall. As such, competition in South Korea is fierce among the two and it this competition that will generally continue to fuel the technology coming out of these two companies (and South Korea) in the future.
That said, if you are planning on running or keeping a tech company afloat in the country, then you should expect it to be quite hard due to the seemingly dominance of these two tech giants. In fact, this has been exactly the case for Pantech. The company was previously accredited with being the third largest smartphone manufacturer in South Korea and only a year ago were planning to take it to Samsung with the launch of their own Note based device, the Pantech Popup Note. However, even by then the problems were already evident with the company close to bankruptcy. So even with the expected release of some new devices, the company could not fight the continued reports that the company were seriously in financial trouble and registering significant losses. In fact, these losses became so significant that the company finally in September of last year, was put up for sale.
Instantly, the speculation grew as to who would buy the company. Of course, as you would expect LG were reported to be thinking about the purchase. Although, by October it seemed like ZTE were quite interested in purchasing Pantech and were even reported submitting a letter of intent to purchase. Well, the unfortunate news for Pantech came last week when the April 17th deadline for companies to register their interest passed. As such, the latest is that it looks like Pantech are slowing running out of options.