LG Shutting Down its Mobile Business in July’21
South Korean company LG has announced in a press release on Monday, shutting down its mobile business in July’21. Reportedly, the company has faced a total loss of around $4.5 billion in nearly six years.
In a statement, LG mentioned, “They are stepping away from Phone manufacturing and sales enable the company to focus on growth sectors including EVs, IoT, artificial intelligence, robotics, B2B Solutions as well as platform and services.”
LG holds the No. 3 spots in the North American market for a long time just after Apple and Samsung and the No. 5 brand in Latin America. However, their existing models will be available in the market until their inventory lasts. Also, for their existing customers, they will continue to provide service support and software updates for a period of time depending upon the region.
LG will continue to leverage its mobile expertise and develop mobile-related technologies such as 6G to further strengthen competitiveness in other business areas, it added.
What is LG’s global share?
LG’s current global share is about 2%. Last year they shipped 23 million phones as compared to 256 million for Samsung, according to research provider counterpoint. As per the analysts, Chinese brands such as Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo do not have much presence in the US market, due to frosty bilateral relations but LG’s absence in Latin America is set to gain benefit for Samsung’s low to mid-range products.
In Seoul, the Smartphone division’s employees will be moved to other LG electronics businesses, while at other locations the employment decision is made at the local levels.
In good times, LG was the first brand in the market with a number of mobile innovations including ultra-wide-angle cameras. But as per analysts, later their both hardware and software faced major issues, and also slower software updates made LG unpopular in the market. Analysts also criticized the lack of expertise in the marketing domain, unlike rival Chinese companies which added to the failure of LG’s Smartphone segment.
Apart from LG other well-known mobile brands such as Nokia, HTC and Blackberry have also fallen from heights, they have yet to disappear completely thus, making LG the first major company to shut down its mobile business.
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