LG closes its phone division.

I know this is technically news (mods please move it if necessary), but I'm gonna say this is probably better off in the Mobile phones section.

LG TO CLOSE MOBILE PHONE BUSINESS WORLDWIDE | LG NEWSROOM

It's official - LG announced a few days ago that it is planning on shutting down its phone division presumably due to having lost millions thanks to relatively poor sales and reception of its devices in order to focus resources on other areas of the company. It's quite sad to see the creator of the very first phone with a capacitive display, especially as it means a further reduction in competition in the phone market.

At the very least, it's safe to say that you shouldn't buy an LG Phone at this time, not that they were selling any of their relatively decent phones here in the UK anyway.

Reply 1

username612415

Sad but ultimately not surprising. LG's history in the Android space for the better part of the last decade has been general blandness (competent blandness, but blandness nonetheless) punctuated by the occasional interesting or innovative idea that did well with enthusiasts, when what they needed to do was find a middle ground and create accessible but interesting devices that would appeal to the masses while differentiating themselves from their fellow South Korean bedmate. The fact that they have literally never been competitive at the low end of the market has likely cost them dearly in the long term, selling cheaper phones in larger volumes would have likely kept the phone division afloat while they kept trying new ideas at the high end, but they squandered that opportunity entirely while letting their influence in the premium space dwindle.

It's a shame, because they've produced some absolute standout devices over the years- the LG Wing was my favorite phone of last year, the V10 and V20 were arguably the first implementation of "pro" phones that brought innovative features and introduced the notion of manual control in video modes, and the LG G5 is the best attempt at modularity that we've seen in consumer phones yet (and after the push from LG and Motorola for flagship modular phones in the same year that never caught on, it will likely never be revisited).