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LG Continues To Bleed Money, Thanks To Smartphones (engadget.com)

Posted by msmash on from the fate-of-our-mobile-divisions dept.

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.

5 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. Shame by balaband · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Shame by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, he is pointing out that the majority of producers are going a specific direction, and there is a large market of people that do not want to go there. The problem for LG is that much of that market now buys cheap China off brand phones because they have removable standard batteries, lots of ports, and stock Android.

  2. Re:Availability? by fred6666 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why would anyone invest in those modules? LG should have made a pledge to support these modules, and that every future phone they release in the next 5 years will be compatible with the modules if they wanted to be trusted.
    Otherwise everybody knew these modules were going nowhere and that the G6 would not support them.

  3. Re:Boot-loops by courteaudotbiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I had an LG G2 a couple years ago. After 6 months owning it, the touchcreen controller or sensor stopped working. I had Rogers (My Canadian provider) replace the defective screen. After another 6 months, it did the exact same thing, but the phone was out of warranty. Both Rogers and LG refused to repair the phone. This was, and forever will be, the last LG phone I owned.

    Now I have a Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge and am perfectly happy with it.

  4. Re:Availability? by X86BSD · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The idea was STUPID and an epic design failure. Even Google scrapped their "modular" phone idea. Everyone who has their fingerprints on this should be fired and blacklisted from being hired ever again.