Shim Sun-jung was a bit puzzled when one of her colleagues, Erica Lee, kept sending her text messages with typos.

After a while, even some of the emails she received from Erica - who usually pays meticulous attention to detail - started to contain misspelled words.

But the errors were corrected soon enough, so Shim thought nothing more of it.

When the two had a chance to meet for dinner a short time afterwards, Shim saw that Erica had acquired a smartphone: the iPhone 3.

The tiny keypad was the source of the typos," Shim said.

Erica, however, raved about her "smartphone," boasting how she was able to search anything she wanted online at any given time.

She also hinted that Shim was falling behind the times by sticking with her "dumb phone".

Shim is now weighing up whether she should be making reservations to buy one of the smarter phones.

"I may be backwards, but I still don't believe it would change my life dramatically," the 31-year-old confessed. "I also can't fathom the thought of having to make reservations to buy a mobile phone when there are so many phones that are practically free."

Shim's ponderings come against the backdrop of huge fanfare about the rapidly growing smartphone market here.

Currently, about 4 per cent of the entire South Korean population use them, but the figure is expected to rise.