SK Telecom said Wednesday that about 28,000 people had signed up for its to-be-released Apple iPhone 4 in the first seven hours of registration.

A total of 28,000 people made their registrations by 2 p.m. and the number was expected to increase to up to 100,000 people by the end of the day, according to company officials.

The country’s leading mobile carrier also said that the first group of 10,000 people would be able to get their hands on iPhone 4 on March 16, the date that SKT releases the device.

“We need to show fundamentally differentiated marketing tactics compared to our competitors with the introduction of iPhone,” said Seo Jin-woo, chief of SKT’s platform business division during a meeting with its employees in Gwangju.

SKT recently decided to bring in Apple’s smartphones after continuing debates over the global giant’s after-service policies for more than a year.

(sharon@heraldcorp.com)