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LG Continues To Bleed Money, Thanks To Smartphones (engadget.com)
LG's big bet on modular smartphone G5 didn't pan out the way it wanted, and its mobile business continues to bleed money. From a report on Engadget: The final quarter of 2016 saw the company take a severe blow, actually losing $223.98 million, mostly thanks to its failing handset division. [...] The numbers are buried deep in its figures, however, revealing that the firm hawked 14.1 million units in the quarter. Operating losses, meanwhile, sunk to around $400.2 million despite "strong sales" of the V20. But any boost that the V20 offers only serves to offset the soul-sucking failure of the G5, still chewing through money long after the company began announcing its replacement.
Probably has something to do with their manufacturing process that led to their flagship phones (LG G4, G5, Nexus 5X) going into an infinite reboot-loop after roughly a year of use. There's a big Reddit thread about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/nexus5x/comments/5l66de/bootloop_megathread_20/
I have an LG G5. The modules were near non-existent. I'm not even sure where you could go to buy them - were they carrier exclusives? The idea was solid, but the marketing behind it was a huge flop.
Which is really a pity - they are probably one of the last producers of phones with changeable batteries and sd card slot. My LG G3 is 2.5 years old and still going strong as day 1.
They have succumb to the trend set by (also failed) Google ARA project which made no sense to start with.
If anybody from the LG is reading this: keep doing what you were doing, only "modular" thing needed on the phone are battery and memory card. Keep the headphone jack, keep the excellent build quality and do as minimal changes as you must to the original android UI.
There is a lot of us that don't want flashy gimmicks with money to spend and less and less options to choose. Be smart.
I moved to an LG G2 a few years back due to issues with my previously preferred HTC models (update and battery mostly). I loved the phone until - dead spots on the touch screen. It eventually after a couple months became unusable. I replaced the digitizer & LCD, only to have the dead spots return more aggressivly within a month. This left me with an inoperable smart phone for the last 6 months of a 2 year contract.
My son had a G3 shortly after, which died altogether with main board issues that were apparently common to the model.
After hearing HTC had solved all the issues that moved me to LG, I went back to HTC out of fear of hardware failure with LGs. It's no wonder they are losing money / sales in the handset arena - which is a shame, because when the phones work, they are quite nice.
I still own one and very happy with it. No BS phone only what one needs. I cannot even remember how many times it fell on the hard surface and other than few scratches it still works perfectly. Only battery is after all these years a bit worn off. If only all other my phones worked as well as this one.
Which is really a pity - they are probably one of the last producers of phones with changeable batteries and sd card slot. My LG G3 is 2.5 years old and still going strong as day 1.
Which might tell you something about how little most customers care about those features. Nothing wrong with those features but they add cost and if people aren't willing to pay extra for them then there is no point in building them into the product.
If anybody from the LG is reading this: keep doing what you were doing, only "modular" thing needed on the phone are battery and memory card. Keep the headphone jack, keep the excellent build quality and do as minimal changes as you must to the original android UI.
Keeping doing what they are doing is what got them into this situation in the first place. Obviously whatever they are doing isn't what customers are willing to pay for so they need to do something else. Exactly what that is I don't pretend to know.
Operating losses, meanwhile, sunk to around $400.2 million despite "strong sales" of the V20.
This is a fancy way of saying you can generate a lot of revenue selling $2 bills for $1. Just because they sell a lot of something doesn't mean they are selling it at a price that is profitable. If the only way you can move a lot of product is to sell it below cost then it's probably a good idea to get out of that market.
Ok, let me get this straight. A competitor enters a saturated market where there are very high quality products that people are very satisfied with. This competitor is hoping to introduce a better, competing product or a product at a better price point to shoe horn their way into market and spends a lot of money on R&D based on some irrational product vision? It's not like they couldn't have known there was high risk involved. This sounds like the pointy haired boss in Dilbert. "We are going to make this wonderful doohickey that makes money in a saturated market dominated by good products. My visionary work here is done, now go make it happen." Every time I see this sort of thing from executive management, it makes me want to slap someone especially because the workers usually all get thrown under the bus but they get a golden parachute.
We'll make great pets
was also a phone made by LG. Probably the best Android phone for its time. Nexus 6 was too big and after that Snapdragon 808 and 810 kept the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P from being top spot when it comes for performance due to heating issues and being generally shitty SoCs. Nexus 5 from my POV was the peak of Android OS. In fact Nexus 5 could run the last version of Android 7 Nougat just fine if it wasn't for the shitty policy of providing updates for only 2 years and for the Qualcomm assholes who don't want to provide support for the still good enough SoC Snapdragon 800.
rock and a hard place. Time to go find a different pond.
You did a great job listing the good features of LGs. Two more:
1. They are inexpensive (compared to similar Samsung phones)
2. They are well supported by 3rd party ROMs. I have an older LG phablet, but am running the latest Android/Cyanogenmod on it. Awesome!
Unfortunately, leaked info about the upcoming G6 indicates that LG has succumbed to non-replaceable battery syndrome. *sigh*
My LG Stylo 2 Plus has great battery life AND a replaceable battery, so it's clearly not an impossible task to have both.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
Remember it's a Chaebol and includes LG Electronics, LG Display, LG Uplus, LG Chem, LG Life Sciences, and LG Solar Energy.
Given how many industries they're in the chart they provide is a spurious correlation at best.
LG is not "bleeding money", or "dying". This is just regurgitating an anti-competition shit-post from engadget.com because LG is making a bit of a splash with their new G6 and others. It seems all this and other US-centric tech sites do is post news to make people believe all the foreign companies are dying, or going away, hoping to lure people into buying the "safe" American products instead.
Econ Girl explains it for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqStv4k06A
Econ Girl explains it for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Mind blown. You really need 11 minutes of formal academic Economics terminology to say: 0 revenue - unrecoverable fixed costs = you lost money? There's another subject matter domain that can help with this, it's referred to as: common sense.
We'll make great pets
Modular phones are not going to happen....stop trying to make them happen.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
I think LG is getting what they deserve for allowing carriers to lock the bootloader... even when I outright purchased the phone. This is true on the G3 and G4 on many carriers (excluding the international version -- you are in great shape if that works for you!).
I owned a G2 and had endless GPS-lock issues because of a faulty antenna design.
I own a G4 that has already been replaced for the bootloop issue. Other than that, and the damn locked bootloader, it's been a nice device. One day it will probably bootloop again; thus, I make sure to keep it backed up. What a waste of effort.
When the modular G5 came out, my first impression is that there was no commitment to the modular design, and sure enough it's been ditched already.
Yes, LG's handset division is hurting because they've made a number of bad designs and bad decisions.
That's what happens when a company does not deliver hot devices. Those that come up with explosive handsets are doing much better. Indeed, they have rekindled the public's interest, with their money now burning a hole in their pockets. Such fiery companies are searing the competition.
The older phones are STILL selling well. Look at the prices on eBay.
Secondary markets are irrelevant as far as LG is concerned. And just because you see a few of them selling on eBay does not mean they are "selling well". Selling well in the context of a company like LG means selling tens of millions of units. Guarantee you aren't seeing that on eBay. A high price on eBay doesn't necessarily mean it was popular - it often means that it was rare.
There's another subject matter domain that can help with this, it's referred to as: common sense.
Turns out common sense isn't especially common.
LG V20 is pretty much everything I want, SD Card Slot, Removable battery and a DAC built in. I carry a dac with me, and good fiio dacs are only 90 bux. Worth it to drive good headphones off your cell phone. But the LG V20 is 800 bux and I can't see spending that much. My modded note 4 has a 10k zero lemon and custom rom/kernel that gets great life and almost speedy as my s7, except chrome doesn't scroll as sliky smooth just average smooth.
I'd say the oneplus is 2nd in almost everything I'd want, but lacking removable battery. They even upgraded with the 3T to a faster cpu.
Seems like phone manufacturers are just reducing features by the big boys. I don't need water proof at the expense of a battery. I don't have access to cloud everywhere, I use sd card. I want a big screen to read books and watch youtube. Would like front facing speakers that sound good. (LG V20 Again), a nice 4k camera is a nice touch also.
Chinese phones seem to be the real players besides LG, lots of cool features and not as crippled. But I'm not buying an extremely expensive phone I cant get a warranty on that I have to ship to china for that price. But many of those phones have translation issues also.
XDA has a large LG modding community, and thats also a good thing. I'm just sad most the good devs left the note 4 community for newer phones, last rom update security update didnt get used in any new roms. Kinda sad.
I have to say that it looks quite nice. Especially the wide angle camera is unique in many ways, although it would be nice to also have a telephoto option.
And that is exactly where the "camera" module disappoints: it does not have a camera! That would have been a perfect opportunity to add a zoom in camera.
Not sure how long it'll last, but I just bought a Samsung S7 for $240 and it's got a removable battery and a smart card slot that I put a 32gig card in.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I've recently acquired an LG XPower - I am hugely impressed with it... so far, at least.
http://www.lg.com/us/cell-phones/lg-LS755-Black-x-power-sprint
Maybe if they didn't have such bad customer service, they wouldn't be bleeding customers.
(Every single LG G4 dies, from what I've been told by service people--the CPU or motherboard is severely defective. When I tried to get them to repair it, they tried to charge me more than the full value of the phone. That was clearly intended to make me buy a new phone. I did, but definitely not a phone made by LG.)
A cat can't teach a dog to bark.
Honestly I love my G5. I consciously and intentionally chose it over Samsung, Motorola and HTC flagship phones available at time if purchase (first month of availability).
And I was a happy G3 customer before that.