Which Phones Do Koreans Actually Use? Galaxy Wins 81%, But Women in Their 20s Are 67% iPhone (2026)

Step onto a Seoul subway car and the scene hits you right away. Passengers over 40, almost without exception, hold a Galaxy. A cluster of women in their 20s? iPhones everywhere. It is not random. Korea is, as a whole, one of the most Samsung-concentrated smartphone markets in the world—and simultaneously one of the only places where Apple flips the script within a specific age-gender slice. Below are the latest 2026 numbers and the Korea-specific forces behind that split.

What phone brands do Koreans use?

Overwhelmingly, Samsung Galaxy. In a Gallup Korea survey released July 13, 2026, 81% of 1,675 smartphone users aged 13 and up said they use Galaxy and 19% iPhone. For travelers coming from markets where Apple holds near-majority share—the US, Japan—those numbers feel alien.

Here is another way to read that concentration: 96% of Galaxy users said their next phone will also be a Samsung. Once someone enters the Galaxy ecosystem in Korea, they rarely leave.

Split by gender alone, the gap looks modest. Men: Galaxy 84%, iPhone 16%. Women: Galaxy 78%, iPhone 22%. The gender gap is just 6 percentage points. The real dividing line in Korea is not gender—it is age. Gender is the second variable layered on top.

How do men and women in their 20s and 30s split?

One number tells the story. Across the entire Korean population, iPhone beats Galaxy in exactly one group: 20-somethings, specifically women in their 20s.

📊 iPhone usage by age and gender (Gallup Korea, July 2026, ages 13+, n=1,675)

Here is how to read the table. Women in their 20s are twice as likely to use an iPhone as a Galaxy—but among men the same age, Galaxy is already the majority. By the 30s, Galaxy leads for both men and women. The gap widens through the 40s, and by the 50s iPhone statistically vanishes. Korean men live in a one-man-one-Galaxy world, and the exception is the early-to-mid 20s window.

Why is Korea tilted this far toward Galaxy?

The lazy explanation—patriotism—does not hold up on its own. The real reasons Koreans stick with Galaxy come down to two pieces of infrastructure that exist nowhere else quite like this.

First, payments — Samsung Pay works everywhere, Apple Pay barely exists

Samsung Pay just works at nearly every card terminal in Korea. Apple Pay, meanwhile, launched in March 2023 with Hyundai Card—and as of June 2026, Hyundai Card remains essentially the only partner issuer. Shinhan Card was preparing a launch in March 2026 but it fell through. KB Kookmin Card and Toss Bank have completed their regulatory reviews but keep pushing back their timelines, reportedly over Samsung Pay fee negotiations. To a Korean person, the phrase “pay with your phone” still assumes a Galaxy in hand.

Second, call recording — legal in Korea, and a workplace necessity

In Korea, recording a phone conversation you are a party to is legal. Samsung ships call recording as a built-in feature in markets where it is permitted—Korea, Japan, Canada among them. Because recording is illegal in some US states, Apple long avoided the feature entirely. When iOS 18.1 finally added it in October 2024, the implementation came with a catch: an automated voice announcement plays for both parties when recording begins. The moment that announcement fires during a work call, practicality evaporates—a near-universal assessment among Korean office workers.

So why did 20-somethings choose iPhone?

Looked at from the other side, the two infrastructure advantages above are workplace needs. Call recording and Samsung Pay are not urgent features for a student. Instead, 20-somethings chose camera color rendering, design, the seamless handoff with iPad, AirPods, and Apple Watch, and the sensibility the brand projects.

Cultural stigma played a role too. Korean internet culture has a long-running pair of slurs: Galaxy users get called 삼엽충 (samyeopchung, “Samsung trilobite”), and Apple users 앱등이 (aepdeungi, roughly “Apple slave”). By the 2020s, Galaxy picked up an image as an 아재폰 (ajae-pon, “middle-aged guy’s phone”) with a nastier cousin, 갤레기 (gael-legi, “Galaxy trash”). In 2023, singer Sung Si-kyung went viral recounting on YouTube how “a young woman asked me, ‘Oppa, do you really use a gael-legi?’” But framing this as a gender war is overblown. As Korean news outlet E-Korea’s fact-check pointed out, age is the primary variable driving brand preference in Korea, and among those 50 and up, men actually show slightly higher iPhone preference than women.

Gen Z brand perception data backs up this emotional landscape.

The 2026 reversal — 20-somethings are turning back to Galaxy

This is the most interesting story in Korea right now. The phone in their hand is still an iPhone, but a growing number of 20-somethings say their next phone will be a Galaxy.

Job platform Catch surveyed 3,045 job seekers: current phone ownership was iPhone 63% vs Samsung 35%, but future purchase intent dropped to iPhone 52%—an 11-point slide—while Samsung rose to 40%. Narrowing to ages 25–29, the flip is even sharper: iPhone 62% usage → 51% intent; Galaxy 36% usage → 42% intent—the ranking reverses. Vinulabs, surveying 500 university students, found a similar pattern: ownership split iPhone 61.6% vs Galaxy 38.4%, but purchase intent narrowed to iPhone 57.4% vs Galaxy 42.6%.

The reasons for switching are calculation, not emotion. Among 20-somethings planning to leave iPhone for Galaxy, 26% said “the features I want are missing” and 18% said “the price is too high.” At Korean launch pricing, the iPhone 17 starts at ₩1,290,000 for 256GB; the Galaxy S25 starts at ₩1,155,000. And here is a telling signal that brand image has already weakened: among 1,917 iPhone users, only 12% said they chose it because “the brand image is hip and trendy”—lower-ranked than design, camera, device ecosystem, and even the OS.

The most emblematic answer came from a single job seeker.

In other words, the trigger for brand switching in Korea is not age itself—it is employment. The moment a student becomes an office worker, call recording, Samsung Pay, and A/S accessibility suddenly matter, and the infrastructure of the Korean market reveals itself as built for Galaxy. On the ground, sales staff report men in their late 20s browsing Galaxy Z Fold devices and women the same age checking out the Z Flip and S25 series.

Why do market share numbers look different in every news article?

Scroll through Korean smartphone market share headlines and you will see Apple at 16% in one article and 39% in another. Both are correct. Quarterly sales share swings dramatically with the iPhone release cycle.

📊 Korea quarterly smartphone sales share (Counterpoint Research)

The pattern repeats every year: in Q4, right after a new iPhone drops, Apple surges to 34–39%. In the first half, when the Galaxy S series launches, Apple sinks back to 15–20%. If you want the real feel of the Korean market, ignore single-quarter spikes and look at the annual average or Gallup’s usage-rate survey instead. Worth noting: the iPhone 17, launched September 2025, got strong reception for its price freeze and hardware upgrades, and ranked as the world’s top-selling phone in Q1 2026 (6% of global sales).

What travelers and foreign residents actually need to know

In a nutshell

Korea is a Galaxy-by-default country. For anyone over 40, it is not even a choice—and the reason, more than patriotism, is the infrastructure of Samsung Pay and call recording. The exception is 20-somethings, especially women in their 20s, who chose camera, design, and device ecosystem. And the 2026 story is that even this exception group is turning back to Galaxy the moment they start working. In Korea, a phone brand is partly a matter of taste—but mostly it is a marker of where you are in life.

Frequently asked questions

What phone brand do Koreans mainly use?

Samsung Galaxy. In Gallup Korea’s July 2026 survey, 81% of 1,675 smartphone users aged 13 and up said Galaxy, 19% iPhone. Galaxy hits 84% among 40-somethings, 97% among 50-somethings, and near 100% for those 60 and up.

Do Korean women in their 20s really use iPhones that much?

Yes. iPhone usage among women in their 20s hit 67%—the highest for any age-gender group—doubling Galaxy at 33%. Men in their 20s: 41%, women in their 30s: 42%, men in their 30s: 34%. However, the sample size for women in their 20s was 99 people (±10% margin of error), so Gallup advised reading the figures as a trend rather than precise numbers.

Are there downsides to using an iPhone in Korea?

Payments and call recording. As of June 2026, Apple Pay is still essentially tied to Hyundai Card alone, while Samsung Pay works at almost every terminal. Call recording is legal in Korea and built into Galaxy phones as a workplace staple. iPhones added it in iOS 18.1 but the automatic voice announcement makes it hard to use in a professional context.

As a traveler, is an iPhone fine to use in Korea?

No problem at all. The country runs on KakaoTalk, so there is no iMessage-style platform lock. Maps (Naver Map, KakaoMap), transit (T-money in Apple Wallet since October 2025), and payments all work on iOS. Just do not count on Apple Pay at checkout—bring a physical card or set up KakaoPay as a backup.