It’s the new K-pop concert starter kit: a T-shirt emblazoned with your favorite singer’s name, a band light stick, and a rented Samsung phone with a razor-sharp zoom.
K-pop fans clamoring for a picture of their favorite singers have carved out a niche market within the South Korean tech industry, with people shelling out money to rent Samsung Galaxy phones for a day.
K-pop concerts have been known to easily and repeatedly sell out arenas that can seat upward of 16,000 people, such as the Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul. And a strong zoom lens is crucial for fans seated far from the stage.
So, phones with 10x optical zoom lenses are now a key part of the concert survival tool kit.
At least a dozen established businesses in Southeast Asia offer day rentals of phones like the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and Galaxy S24 Ultra for under $50.
Both phones, released in February 2023 and January 2024, respectively, have strong 10x optical zoom lenses. Samsung did not respond to a request for comment for this story from Business Insider.
$30 to rent a Samsung phone for a day
Small businesses and individuals rent phones for concert day use all across Southeast Asia. But in South Korea — the home of K-pop, where concerts go on all year round — the market is particularly hot.
One business offering this phone rental service is Snapshoot. Founded in 2022, the company rents phones for 15,000 to 30,000 South Korean won, or about $10.80 to $21.70, daily.
Mingwan Jeong, the founder of Snapshoot, told BI her business serves hundreds of customers monthly and is increasingly attracting customers from outside South Korea, such as Japan, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
“When Samsung released the S22 Ultra, their promotional slogan emphasized its capability to ‘photograph the moon,’” Jeong said. “Fans quickly recognized that this advanced camera could help them capture their idols clearly at concerts.”
She said Snapshoot started in 2022 with a small inventory of 10 phones, but now keeps several hundred smartphones in stock at any given time.
Another example is Woori Mobile Service, a South Korean telecommunications company that started renting out phones in 2023. Its collection points are at Seoul’s Konkuk University and the hip Sinchon neighborhood. It also has a pickup point at Seoul’s Incheon airport, catering to Woori’s foreign clients.
“Many of them didn’t own the latest smartphones or didn’t want the hassle of international roaming,” Han Da Bean, a spokesperson for Woori Mobile, told BI.
The company offers rentals of the S23 and S24 models, charging 35,000 won or about $25 per day, and a 10,000 won daily reservation fee.
Woori Mobile
“Samsung’s flagship models like the S23 Ultra and S24 Ultra offer exceptional camera and audio capabilities, especially in low light and concert environments, making them ideal for fans looking to record memories in high definition,” Han added.
He said the company serves 50 to 100 rental customers a month, typically renting out the phones for three to seven days. They see a spike in activity during major K-pop festivals and tour seasons, he added.
Han said Woori Mobile keeps an inventory of about 20 Samsung devices, but it plans to expand to other models like the Galaxy Z Fold and Flip series and add more mid-range models for budget-conscious users.
Forholiday, a luggage storage and rental company in Seoul, also offers phone rentals, with its services available on Klook. It has rented phones to more than 2,000 customers, per the Klook listing.
The company rents the S23 Ultra for 11,800 won and the S24 Ultra for 15,700 won daily.
Forholiday’s CEO, Shin Dong-min, told BI the company’s phone rentals are a stopgap for cost-conscious fans.
“It is inevitably burdensome to buy expensive mobile phones to use them for a short period,” Shin said.
Shin said Forholiday sees the most demand around concerts by boy bands BTS, Seventeen, Stray Kids, and Zerobaseone.
Worth every cent
Some K-pop fans who’ve rented phones for concerts have said the experience was worth every cent.
“I own an iPhone 11, which works pretty well except the phone camera is limited to a 3x, which means I can’t do any close-up fancams if I’m in any seat beyond VIP,” Ghia Hong, a content creator from Malaysia, told BI.
TikTok user wanderwithgaby also posted about renting a Samsung S25 for 50,000 South Korean won.
“It was the best money I spent,” she wrote in the caption of a zoomed-in fan video of BTS member J-Hope.
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A+ marketing for Samsung
To be sure, Samsung’s smartphones are not the only phones with a strong zoom lens.
Google’s Pixel 9 Pro’s specs say it produces pictures with the quality of a 10x optical zoom. Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro has a 5x optical zoom function and a 25x digital zoom option. Other Asian brands like Oppo, Huawei, and Xiaomi are strong contenders, too.
Still, the rental service is doing wonders for Samsung’s image.
Parker Burton, a tech reviewer and content creator on YouTube with over a million followers, said Samsung likely became the phone of choice because the brand has a huge fan base on home ground in South Korea.
“I think a big part of it can stem from the fact that it’s a brand that people are used to and familiar with and has a lot of trust and loyalty in the community,” Burton said.
Catherine Bautista, a partner at Flying Fish Lab, a branding consultancy agency in Singapore, said Samsung is also core to fan culture, and rentals have made it “the default choice for K-pop enthusiasts.”
“Renting out Galaxy S23/S24 Ultra phones for K-pop concerts is a brilliant reputation booster for Samsung because, instead of simply competing on specs, Samsung dominates a niche need and turns fans into brand ambassadors,” she said.
Bautista said Samsung has also positioned itself as the “official phone of K-pop” by sponsoring concerts, featuring top idols in its advertisements, and releasing special edition phones.
Samsung recently tapped Felix Lee, a singer from the band Stray Kids, as its newest ambassador. Lee, who is also a house ambassador of fashion powerhouse Louis Vuitton, is the face of the ad campaign for the brand’s latest super-slim Galaxy S25 Edge phone.
And with Stray Kids now on a 34-city tour, the group’s fans can sing, dance, and zoom in on their idols’ faces to their hearts’ content.