LG exiting the smartphone industry: Reasons!

LG has always been known for its innovation and experimenting in the smartphone industry. The credit for ultra wide angle cameras on recent smartphones’ has to go to them. It’s not like LG was very inactive and finally decided to quit. In fact, they launched quite a few ‘experimental’ smartphones in 2020. Some of them include the LG Wing, the Velvet, the G8X. All of these weren’t normal phones. They’ve got something peculiar in them. The LG Wing’s got a secondary swivelling display, while the Velvet and G8X’ve got dual detachable screens. With this said, you might’ve assumed the pricing to be on the higher side. But no, the G8X on a Flipkart sale costed just 19,990 INR. So, the pricing’s great, and there’s a new form factor, usually better than the normal, then why did it fail? Here’s why!

Image Courtesy: Unsplash (edited)

Pricing:

Your reaction after reading the sub-heading might probably be like: “Wait, what? You just said they’re priced well”. But here’s the catch! All their smartphones aren’t priced so low at the time of launch. For reference, the G8X costed 70K INR at the time of launch and was available at 19,990 INR in the Flipkart sale a few months later. Those people who bought it at 70K in the beginning would obviously lose faith in the company, maintaining which is a key factor for success. 

After-sales service: 

This’ always been a concern for LG, atleast in India. The after-sales services have been miserable (smartphones only). I’m not commenting on the quality of their service, but the accessibility. There’re very few service centres in any particular city. For instance, I live in Bengaluru and the number of service centres here are SEVEN. That’s surely not the kind of accessibility a person owning an LG Wing or LG Velvet’d expect. Even if there’re local merchants nearby, they surely wouldn’t have the expertise in repairing LG smartphones, nor’d they have spare parts. 

If this’ compared to the likes of Xiaomi and Samsung, they’ve got amazing after-sales service. Though they’ve got bad software and specs respectively, they’ve been really successful in India, a market where after-sales service is so much considered. 

Overall Package: 

No doubt LG Smartphones had something really out of the box, they’d most times not have a complete package/experience. While the Wing had a swivelling display, it lacked good performance. The G8X, though was priced well (later), had dual-screens and a respectable processor, the design and battery were totally out of trend. It had really bad bezels and a mere 4000 mAh to handle two 6.4 AMOLED screens. 

Software: 

The Software on LG smartphone is surely miles better than MIUI on Xiaomi and Redmi smartphones. But considering the price (Wing and Velvet), consumers expected quick updates. LG smartphones got updates way later than its counterparts. 

As of now though, after the shutdown, LG’s promised Android 11 update for some of its smartphones and Android 12 too, for some of them (The Wing, most probably). 

Source: Android Authority

So, with all that said, Life’s not Good for LG smartphone owners and fanboys, anymore, atleast in India. No actually, when was it even good for them, except for the mind-boggling 20K deal for the G8X!  

These were some of my thoughts on the decline of LG smartphones in India. What’re yours? The same? If you’ve got something to add on or you disagree to some point, you’re always welcome to lemme know in the comments. 🙂 

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