LG Finally Shutting Down Their Smartphone Business

The Korean-based electronic company, LG has announced to finally quit producing smartphones in the market. The announcement was made last Monday (5/4) as the board of directors gave the ‘green light to start disbanding the product. The main reason for this closure is due to the product unable to compete with other ventures in selling smartphones.

The decision to disband the smartphone business started when the company decided to review the future of the business, including their awareness of other competitors. They were planning to improve and maintain their smartphone business, with the addition of introducing a rollable phone. However, as it seems the company cannot handle it and then consider to withdrew from the business.

As withdrawing the smartphone business, LG will now continue to focus its growth on electrical components, smart homes and connected devices, AI and Business-to-Business solutions, robotics, and platform services. For the future, LG stated they will keep developing mobility-related technologies, such as 6G, and those developed technologies will be applied to their future tech products.

Reports from March have informed that LG has held talks after the business is in a difficult position in searching for a buyer for their smartphone business. However, the talks were halted, and instead of shutting down the division.

The company did release a series of eye-catching devices and the LG Wing display that would show a secondary screen on the dual-screen display. They also planned to build the LG G5 but decided to abandon it a year later. These efforts from the company failed to blend in with other popular products. Other products would eventually upgrade the main features, such as increasing their camera quality and performance.

Being ranked no.3 for the smartphone market in the US, LG also will continue to sell their phones until the last stock, with the addition of software updates in the future. LG has been struggling in their smartphone’s financial performance after facing fierce midrange and high-end class competitors, such as Samsung, Apple, Oppo, Xiaomi, and Huawei, which caused them to fail in turning things around.

Other than their smartphones, LG is also struggling with their mobile payment services through competition with other smartphone companies. Despite being launched in 2017, the service didn’t have significant growth throughout the years based on their portfolio.

With the addition of LG, the company has joined other popular device companies who decided to give up their hopes of boosting their smartphone business. Nokia, HTC, and Blackberry had similar problems with LG, however, for Blackberry, they are planning to return this year with a device made by Onward Mobility.

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