LG Plans To Sell 75 Million Devices in 2013
LG made one of the best first-generation Windows Phone devices in the Optimus 7, and proved that despite its reputation it wasn’t just a low-cost phone OEM. Now that we have the Optimus G and an assured influx of new devices for the next few quarters, LG plans to take back some of the market share lost to Samsung, Sony, HTC and Motorola over the last few years.
According to a report from the Korean Times, the manufacturer of the Optimus line of Android devices aims to move 75 million handsets this year. Of those, 45 million are projected to be smartphones.
The figure seems like a drop in the bucket for competitors like Apple and Samsung. The latter justsurpassed sales of 40 million for their Galaxy S3 flagship alone, which has been on the market for less than a year. Samsung has set a much loftier goal of 500 million phones sold.
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.
