Full-size tablets are still uncommon in the country
Consumers in South Korea bought more tablets in 2015?but mobile users in the country still have relatively few such devices compared to their neighbors across Asia-Pacific.
According to the International Data Corporation (IDC), tablet shipments in South Korea in 2015 were up substantially over the prior year, rising from just under 1.5 million in 2014 to 2 million.
For a country of about 50 million people, that’s not many tablets?and other evidence suggests tablets are not very big in South Korea.
According to Adobe, for example, just 2.0% of traffic in South Korea came from tablets in 2014, compared to 34.8% which came from smartphones. Other countries in Asia-Pacific had higher shares of traffic from tablets, including Japan (5.1%), India (4.1%) and Australia and New Zealand (11.1%). In China, 4.6% of web traffic came from tablets that year.
In April 2015, Yahoo and Flurry reported that just 2% of mobile device usage in South Korea came from full-sized tablets, with an additional 1% from small tablets. That compared to 7% and 4%, respectively, in China.
Instead, consumers in South Korea have turned to phablets. The Yahoo/Flurry research found 63% of mobile usage was from phablets?far higher than any other Asia-Pacific country studied.
According to Cisco Systems, there were 1 million connected tablets in use in South Korea in 2014. Cisco expected that figure to rise to 3 million by 2019.