LG plans to sell 75 million phones in 2013, 45 mil smartphones. Will get back into WP8 game with several devices
By Staska on 16 Jan 13LG plans to continue its slow turnaround in mobile this year. It plans to sell 75 million handsets in 2013 (compared to 55 million in 2012), 45 million of them will be smartphones.
LG is getting back into Windows Phone 8 game too, and is now developing several WP8 devices to complement a moderately successful Android Optimus line-up.
That’s according to the executive of one of LG’s local partners who talked to Korea Times.
Korean Conglomerate’s smartphone plans are nowhere near as ambitious as its chief rival’s – Samsung’s, which plans to ship more than half a billion phones and more than 300 million smartphones this year. But that’s to be expected.
LG made a lot of bad choices in the aftermath of iPhone. Abandoning an opportunity to make the very first Android smartphone and betting heavily on the dead-end Windows Mobile platform, it completely missed the great smartphone explosion of 2009-2011. As a result, LG’s mobile business cratered, and it went into a period of protracted and heavy losses for several years.
They managed to stop the bleeding last year, and now seem to be turning things around on the backs of the cheap Optimus L line, a rather underpriced Optimus G flagship and also amazingly low cost Google’s Nexus 4. By the second half of 2012 LG’s smartphone volumes started growing nicely again, and it even managed to turn a modest profit despite going the cheap device route for most of the year.
If LG now manages to upscale its product line with new high end devices on Android and Windows Phone 8, 2013 might be a pretty good year for them.
If you liked the post, you might find these interesting too:
- LG president says Windows Mobile is “rather unqualified in mobile interfaces”
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- LG has sold 3 million LTE smartphones so far, but that’s not as good as it sounds
- Optimus Black and 2X to help LG ship 30 million smartphones this year
- LG has already sold 4 million Optimus LTE smartphones
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