South Korea has finally taken a step forward to liberalising its much regulated telecoms market by lifting a technical requirement that has made it hard for foreign handset makers to break into the market. The Korea Communications Commission has said that adopting WIPI, a homegrown technology on which all local handset applications are based, will no longer be mandatory from next April.

The move will allow foreign players, who previously found it too expensive to produce handsets tailored for South Korea in line with the WIPI rule, a way into a market. Samsung and LG together control nearly 80 per cent of the market.