“The commission has endorsed the local sale of the iPhone and the launch of its service within the limits of the law,” said Lee Tae-hee, a spokesman of the Korea Communications Commission. “If Apple includes location based-related details as a form of an agreement to its strategic partners such as KT, Apple’s iPhone can give location-related services here.”

Great news for Apple (AAPL). The South Korean market is a robust one, and analysts say that with the right carrier partner, Cupertino could be looking at sales over the first year ranging from 500,000 to two million. That said, they note that competing with the likes of Samsung and LG on their home turf won’t be easy. Between them, they control about 70 percent of the South Korean handset market.

“There seem to be a lot of people waiting for iPhones to go on sale here but it will not be easy for Apple to crack the Korean market as Samsung and LG already dominate the market with competitive phones,” said Jae Lee, analyst at Daiwa Securities in Seoul. “It will be difficult for Apple to steal market share significantly from the Korean makers in the short term but the iPhone could still be a threat to Samsung and LG in the long term.”

When the iPhone finally does arrive at market in South Korea, it will likely be with KT (formerly known as Korea Telecom) as a carrier partner. As Dan Butterfield over at iPhonAsia notes, KT CFO Yeon-hak Kim suggested as much this past summer. “Apple iPhone will be in our smartphone line-up,” he said in August. “iPhone will help to expand the smartphone market and will contribute to increasing the ARPU (average revenue per user).”

KT officials are telling the Korea Times that they’re looking at a November launch date. “KT has been in talks with Apple to introduce iPhones,” said a KT official. “Sometime in November, the latest iPhone model dubbed as ‘iPhone 3GS’ and its previous model will be commercialized. KT and Apple will decide on the coverage of location-based services.”

Clearly, Oracle’s acquisition binge strategy, which has provided it with more customers and more recurring revenue, has proven a wise one. No surprise, then, that Ellison said the company continues to look for takeover targets. “Some companies have much more attractive valuations right now but I’m not sure they’d be wildly enthusiastic about selling for cash at this point in time,” he said. “So we’re going to wait and see how things play out and we’re looking at a number of small acquisitions in the vertical areas and some potential opportunities for a large company acquisition if the price is right.”

On April 1, 2009, that will all change. The Korea Communications Commission today agreed to lift the WIPI requirement, opening the South Korean market to the iPhone, BlackBerry and other devices to which it had been effectively closed. “Mobile-phone operators have been required to use the WIPI mobile platform on their handsets, but considering global industry trends toward the use of general-purpose mobile operating systems, we concluded that there was a need to allow carriers the freedom to decide whether to use WIPI or not,” Shin Yong-sub, the director of KCC’s policy bureau, told the Korea Times. “Consumers will also be able to choose from a wider variety of products and benefit from increased price competition from handset makers.”

Top among those products, the iPhone, which carriers K Telecom and KTF are both said to be interested in adding to their lineups.

If we maintain our trajectory and IBM maintains their trajectory, we could pass them as early as the end of this year or certainly next year to be the No. 2 player in middleware.”

–Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, Sept. 21

Carl Icahn’s recent appeals to BEA Systems management to discuss a possible sale of the company seem to have set Oracle’s salivary glands flowing. This week the CRM gourmand made an unsolicited $6.66 billion bid for the business-management software maker.

In a letter to BEA’s board Tuesday, Oracle offered $17 a share for BEA–a 25% premium over BEA’s closing stock price yesterday. “We believe our all-cash offer provides the best value for BEA’s shareholders and the best home for BEA’s employees and customers,” said Oracle President Charles Phillips. “This proposal is the culmination of repeated conversations with BEA’s management over the last several years. We look forward to completing a friendly transaction as soon as possible.”

We’ll have to see about that. According to Kevin Faulkner, BEA’s senior vice president of investor relations, the company’s not for sale. ‘Course, PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway said the same thing back in 2003 and look how that turned out.

Anyway, if Tuesday’s offer leads to a deal, Oracle will have spent some $28 billion on acquisitions–33 of them–in the last three years or so. A vast sum, but one apparently well spent. The company’s recent purchases have been widely credited for a 26% spike in earnings in its latest fiscal year and for a 91% increase in its stock price since November 2005. If things continue along that way, we may see Larry Ellison’s IBM prediction come to pass sooner, rather than later.

I’m worried, Larry … I think it’s imperative that we start to budget and plan.”

–Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s accountant Philip Simon

Looks like Larry Ellison’s long-suffering accountant won’t have to reach for the Mylanta next time the mercurial CEO maxes out his more-than-a-billion-dollar credit limit. Yesterday Oracle reported surprisingly strong growth in what is traditionally its weakest quarter of the year. The company’s fiscal first-quarter profit grew 25%, easily besting Wall Street analysts’ expectations. This despite the summer’s nauseating market turbulence. And according to Ellison, this kind of financial success isn’t an anomaly, but a trend and one that will continue to keep Oracle growing faster than competitors like IBM.

“We’re doing very well against them,” Ellison said, referring to IBM.

So well, in fact, that it’s threatening to overtake the company as the No. 2 middleware provider.

“We’re growing dramatically faster than our competitors, and our target really is to beat IBM,” Ellison said. “If we maintain our trajectory and IBM maintains their trajectory, we could pass them as early as the end of this year or certainly next year to be the No. 2 player in middleware.”