Samsung ships 150k Galaxy S4 LTE-A units in homeland Korea

Samsung released its Galaxy S4 LTE-A in Korea a couple of weeks ago and the company has already managed to ship 150,000 units of its latest smartphone in its homeland. That might not be a particularly impressive number compared to the over 20 million units sold by the original Galaxy S4, but when you consider that it's a single market and just two weeks of availability the figure is certainly decent. The Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A comes with the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC rather than the Snapdragon 600 that powers the international version, but is otherwise identical to its predecessor. Theinternational variant comes with a 5-inch 1080p Super AMOLED display, 2 GB of RAM, 13 megapixel rear camera, 32 GB in-built memory, microSD card slot and IR port. The fact that Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A is able to make use of the SK Telecom's new super-fast network speeds and equally well supported by the Samsung's strong marketing campaign has certainly helped push those sales numbers so high. Even though they managed to ship 20 million devices in about 2 months, Samsung’s Galaxy S4 sales have been slower than expected both inside and outside the company. But now, in its native market – Korea – things are picking up for Sammy’s flagship. It helps, of course, that Samsung Galaxy S4 LTE-A for now is the only smartphone able to take advantage of SK Telecom’s new super fast network speeds, and is  heavily promoted by the carrier. Things may get even better for Sammy in coming days, as SKT and LG U+ continue the rollout their LTE-A networks throughout the country, with no competing smartphone for at least a month. Except for iPhone, no foreign smartphone vendor has been able to crack Korean market in the last few years. And Samsung’s main rival –LG – has scheduled the announcement of its first LTE-A supporting G2 smartphone for August 7th. Another major smartphone OEM in Korea – Pantech – hasn’t even even announced when it plans to have its first LTE-A device ready. With all the rivals asleep at the wheel, high end Korean smartphone market is an exclusive Samsung’s playground for now.Samsung hasn’t announced if it will be making the device available in other countries anytime soon. The Galaxy S4 LTE-A runs on Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean with Samsung’s new TouchWiz UX 2.0 out of the box. The device also includes Samsung’s Smart Features: Smart Stay, Smart Pause, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, Air Gestures, S Voice, S Health and S Translator.