Korea had the most smartphones per head of the population in the world last year. U.S. market researcher Strategy Analytics on Tuesday said Korea boasted a smartphone "penetration rate" of 67.6 percent last year.

Second was Norway (55 percent), third Hong Kong (54.9 percent) and fourth Singapore (53.1 percent). The global average was only 14.8 percent.

In 2011, Korea ranked fourth with a penetration rate of 38.3 percent, behind Hong Kong (46.7 percent), Sweden (39.7 percent) and Singapore (38.4 percent). But the rate surged with the spread of fourth-generation LTE mobile technology in July 2011. The number of LTE users here surpassed 20 million in April this year.

The smartphone penetration rate in Korea stood at just 0.7 percent in 2007, 0.8 percent in 2008 and 2 percent in 2009. It surged to 14 percent in 2010 and has been rising quickly since. Strategy Analytics forecast Korea's smartphone penetration rate to reach 79.5 percent this year and 88.9 percent in 2017.