A total of 260,000 Koreans have bought iPhones since the Apple handsets went on sale here on Nov. 28 last year. Samsung has sold 300,000 units of its T Omnia II smartphones since its debut in early November. Altogether, experts say 1 million Koreans own smartphones. Students and office workers who used to pack mobile phones, portable multimedia players (PMPs), MP3 players and electronic dictionaries in their bags now carry a lighter load.

And now that smartphones offer all these functions, people are treating their handsets with extra care and attention. "If my smartphone breaks, I'm afraid I'll be completely out of touch," said one university student. "I spent more than W150,000 (US$1=W1,160) on a carrying handle, protective outer cover and other accessories for my smartphone." The explosive popularity of the iPhone has fueled a boom in sales of accessories, which have also grown in variety and quality. "Customers who recently bought smartphones are interested in different applications for their devices so it looks like sales of unique and high-priced accessories will rise," said Kim Hyun-kyu, a director at online shopping site Auction.

The iPhone's strength lies in its variety of leisure and entertainment functions, while the BlackBerry is big on word processing and business applications. Korean customers are particularly fond of the iPhone's myriad capabilities, from bus arrival alerts to the location of the nearest coffee shop and optimum wake up time based on individual sleep cycles. But the fiddliness of their endless menus is prompting more and more people to refer to smartphones as "stressphones." "In the past, people without mobile phones fell behind," said Suh Yi-jong, a sociologist at Seoul National University. "Now people may feel cut off from the latest trends or information if they don't have smartphones."