LG officially announces shutdown of smartphone business

LG Electronics has officially announced what rumors have been predicting for a while now. The company is shutting down its mobile division worldwide as per a decision approved by its board of directors on April 5.

In a press release confirming its exit from the smartphone space, LG said that its decision “will enable the company to focus resources in growth areas such as electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics, artificial intelligence, and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services.”

LG’s current inventory of phones that are already in the market will continue to be available for sale. The company will also continue to provide software updates to its phones “for a period of time which will vary by region.”

The firm didn’t specify what will be the fate of its rollable phone or the device dubbed LG Rainbow. Our best guess is that these won’t make it to market in light of the latest development.

LG’s smartphone business has been suffering consecutive losses for a while now. Last year, the brand shipped 23 million phones compared to 256 million shipped by local competitor Samsung, according to Counterpoint Research.

The company even reportedly tried to sell the mobile division to Vietnam’s Vingroup JSC and Germany’s Volkswagen AG. However, those talks reportedly fell through, forcing the company to scrap the loss-making entity.

“Moving forward, LG will continue to leverage its mobile expertise and develop mobility-related technologies such as 6G to help further strengthen competitiveness in other business areas. Core technologies developed during the two decades of LG’s mobile business operations will also be retained and applied to existing and future products,” LG noted in today’s announcement.

The company expects to wind down its smartphone business completely by July 31. However, it says that the inventory of some existing models might still be available after that.