They have been reporting losses for six years now and it seems like LG has finally given up on the idea of becoming a key player in the smartphone world.
First reported by The Korea Herald, the decision to shut down started to make rounds within the company after LG CEO Kwon Bong-seok emailed the staff saying something needs to be done about LG's smartphone division. The news was further confirmed by an unnamed LG official, and this does hint towards the fact that may be LG is planning to withdraw from the smartphone business, sell it or even downsize the company's mobile division.
According to the official, LG has decided to go for a major change after considering the fierce competition within the global market for mobile devices. Hence, it is indeed time for LG to make the best decision and not make further losses.
However, there is also another piece of information coming from LG headquarters that states that Bong-seok has informed the staff of no layoffs despite the choice LG makes about its smartphone division
All in all, nothing is finalized yet!
The assumption of LG shutting down the division wouldn’t be a major surprise for anyone who knows that LG last reported profit through the division in their earnings reports for 2014.
Although there was a promise made by Kwon Bong-seok to make LG's mobile division profitable by 2021 but that couldn’t really happen because of COVID-19.
With all the poor performances on a year-by-year basis, LG never fell short of innovation and in fact, introduced some really interesting products in the past decade. The list includes LG G5, the dual-screened LG G8X, and the swiveling LG Wing - all created good hype at their time. The company has also been in plans of introducing a rollable smartphone anywhere in 2021 so now it will be interesting to see how they go about it.
Photo: SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
First reported by The Korea Herald, the decision to shut down started to make rounds within the company after LG CEO Kwon Bong-seok emailed the staff saying something needs to be done about LG's smartphone division. The news was further confirmed by an unnamed LG official, and this does hint towards the fact that may be LG is planning to withdraw from the smartphone business, sell it or even downsize the company's mobile division.
According to the official, LG has decided to go for a major change after considering the fierce competition within the global market for mobile devices. Hence, it is indeed time for LG to make the best decision and not make further losses.
However, there is also another piece of information coming from LG headquarters that states that Bong-seok has informed the staff of no layoffs despite the choice LG makes about its smartphone division
All in all, nothing is finalized yet!
The assumption of LG shutting down the division wouldn’t be a major surprise for anyone who knows that LG last reported profit through the division in their earnings reports for 2014.
Although there was a promise made by Kwon Bong-seok to make LG's mobile division profitable by 2021 but that couldn’t really happen because of COVID-19.
With all the poor performances on a year-by-year basis, LG never fell short of innovation and in fact, introduced some really interesting products in the past decade. The list includes LG G5, the dual-screened LG G8X, and the swiveling LG Wing - all created good hype at their time. The company has also been in plans of introducing a rollable smartphone anywhere in 2021 so now it will be interesting to see how they go about it.
Photo: SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
