After 26 years of business, LG Electronics has announced its plans to shut down its smartphone division.
Another one bites the dust
Like Nokia, Blackberry, Motorola and many other phone manufacturers that were once heavyweights, LG has struggled to carve out a significant piece of the smartphone market as competition has intensified since 2010.
According to Counterpoint research, LG smartphones accounted for just 2% of the global market last year, a significant drop from 2013-2014 when LG was making waves with its "G Series" of phones. We couldn't get our hands on the full market share data, but like so many trends, Google searches often tell the same story.
Life's (still) good
LG may have given up on its smartphone business, but it's far from going out of business — its mobile communications business only made up around 8% of its total revenue last year.
Indeed, the more you look into LG, the more you realise that smartphones are probably going to be the one electrical product they don't sell. TVs, computer screens, washing machines, solar panels, refrigerators, camera equipment, sensors, speakers and air conditioners are just some of the products sold by the South Korean giant, which in total brought in more than $55bn of revenue last year.
