Since July, LG Electronics has withdrawn from the smartphone sector, now reduced to 7% of total turnover. At the beginning of the year, the company had bid farewell to the European market mobile devices, a decision that at the end of 2020 had been communicated confidentially by the managing director Brian Kwon to the internal board.
The fierce competition from Chinese competitors, who practice an extremely low price policy, weighed decisively on the choice. It's about Xiaomi, Huawei, BBK Electronics subsidiaries such as OnePlus, Living, Realme e Oppo.
The second cause of the crisis is the no supply of chips and in particular of the most requested, the Snapdragon, by the Qualcomm.
Finally, the third upstream reason for the choice, the disastrous sales results: 23 consecutive quarters of losses, for a total of 4,5 billion dollars (700 million euros in 2020) which have marked the path of the Korean giant.
Yet, precisely in the mobile telephony sector, LG has always shown creativity: it was, for example, the first company to produce smartphones with displays that were 80% large, when all the others still had large frames. Recently, the company had presented had presented Lg wing, with the impressive dual rotating Velvet display, and the G8X ThinkQ, with its two hinged displays.
In any case LG, that will redistribute the staff within the group busy in the mobile telephony sector, intends to keep the patents relating to 4G and 5G and will continue, it seems, to develop those relating to 6G, the next generation of mobile telephony. In addition to continuing to produce displays, but intended for other manufacturers.
