The Smartphone Market
Innovation alone is not enough: LG wants to throw Smartphones in the towel
The LG Rollable moves its Display from
© LG / PR
Smartphones have been for years getting more and more boring – only LG continued from year to year, bold ideas. The customer is not rewarded the. Now the Smartphone might be saved before the end.
A metal frame a rimless Display, one or more cameras on the glass back side: Loved Smartphone manufacturer in the beginning of time with new ideas, soon developed a standard model with Differences of Detail. Only LG dare again and again to bring time crazy top models on the market. Now LGs Smartphone business is put to the test.
In an internal Letter from the South Korean group suggests major changes without mentioning them in Detail. Instead, there is a remarkable promise: There is no reason to worry, assured CEO Kwon Bong-seok of the “Korea Herald”, according to. “No matter in what direction it is in the Smartphone business is going, the job will remain.”
All of the options for LG on the table
That sounds a little hopeful. A company spokesman told the newspaper that you think is actually all options open, including a sale, reduction and the Setting of the Smartphone business. “As the competition on the global market for mobile devices is sharper, it’s time for LG clarified to make the right decision,” he said therefore.
For LG, it is probably not an easy decision. The group is since the cell phone Era in the mobile business, also belonged to the triumphal procession of the smartphone still for a long time the most successful manufacturers. Even in 2015, LG was among the five biggest Smartphone producers in the world, the group now has slipped to ninth place. Above all, it is now at a loss: 110 million Euro Fucking made the Smartphone segment in the third quarter of 2020, more than three billion in the last five years, a total of.
Innovation as an end in itself
LG is not to show the perfect example of that Innovation alone is not sufficient. While Apple or Samsung was considered in the introduction of new features or Design decisions, always careful to point out, the customers as not to scare off, tore LG always cheerful to the front. The LG G4 leather back, sheathed like a banana curved Display. The LG G5 had not only as the first device, a second lens for wide-angle shots, as you should get the iPhone until the iPhone 11. In addition, the lower edge of the smartphone can be removed to expand it through the “Magic Slot”, with more battery, a better Sound or a camera Add-on.
But what caused always unbelieving eyes at the idea and enthusiasm about the technical implementation, made the use of Smartphones in everyday life is rarely better. The customer handles rather to the more conservative and often lower-priced devices of the competitors. Well LG took some time, sat in between, with the G7 or the G8 rather to classic Smartphones, saved Gadgets as a second screen for special models. But sales rose.
The Experiment failed
The news of the possible end of the Smartphone division is now almost exactly a year after the last change of direction. They wanted to be until 2021 profitable, announced Kwon when he took office at the beginning of 2020. To do this, LG even his essential G-series. Instead, they put permanently on experiments: In the autumn, the group showed the LG Wing with a swing-out removable second screen, at CES two weeks ago, we announced the market launch of the first Smartphone to Roll out later this year.
You are likely to save the division, but barely: The LG Wing sold in the home to Korea’s only just under 50,000 Times, the internal goal of two million sales of goods. And also the LG Rollable is likely to be with a target price beyond the 2000 Euro is not a mass product.
The Smartphone as an advertising
That LG is abandoning its Smartphone business, it still seems rather unlikely. The development costs, one of the largest cost factors to our own devices, in part, brought about the suppliers business in. The group’s subsidiary LG Display is a leading manufacturer of OLED Displays, not only for TV but also for Smartphones. To include the customers, the competitors, such as Apple.
Smartphone Displays have been recently even more important for the group, outdated, with a revenue of 3.6 billion Euro, the TV Panels as the most important product category. The own Smartphones and TVs are for LG, therefore, always be devices which provide the capabilities as a supplier to the advertising. To give it up, would be a fatal Signal.
Sources: Korea Herald, The Verge, LG, gizmo China
