LG became the most recent victim in the mobile phone business when last April decided to go out of business. Actually, LG's decision to shut down its mobile phone business is hardly surprising news, because since years ago, its cell phone business has been battered.
For years, from Q2 2015, to be precise, their mobile phone business has always been at a loss. Finally, in 2020, LG's mobile phone business recorded a loss of USD 715 million.
LG's fate is inversely proportional to its compatriot, namely Samsung, which can still dominate the mobile market for several years, and even if kicked off the top spot, they are still in the top three -- or at least -- the top five.
LG's market share globally is currently only 1%, far behind many other manufacturers. Including the ranks of companies from China that dominate the mobile phone market, such as Oppo, Vivo, Realme, and Xiaomi.
Their appearance also makes LG phones increasingly unable to compete because they dare to sell cheaply with high specs.
The last time an LG phone sold a hefty amount to make it to the top-selling list was in 2014, with the LG G3 selling 10 million units, and in 2013, when the LG G2 sold 3 million units.
Practically after that, there were no phones made by LG that entered the list of best-selling phones, only being the shadow of cellphones made by Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and other manufacturers.
One of LG's biggest achievements was in Q3 2013, when they entered the top three of the mobile phone market share in the United States.
The cell phone business is tough. Many companies have fallen victim to this. Call it BlackBerry and Nokia, although comparing LG with the two companies doesn't seem right.
The reason is that Nokia and BlackBerry have at least tasted the sweetness of the mobile phone business, aka they were victorious in their time. Nokia, for example, before the presence of their smart phone was the leader of the market. Unfortunately they made a mistake when Google released the Android operating system.
At that time Nokia insisted on using Symbian and refused to use Android. Then when they realized that the move was not right, instead of starting to adopt Android, they chose Windows Phone, which later also died because it did not develop.
Finally, Nokia's mobile phone business was sold to Microsoft, and then it was in the hands of HMD Global.
Likewise with BlackBerry, which had a golden age in 2008. Many people use their mobile phones. They also briefly underestimated the presence of the iPhone, which was first released in 2007, which was considered by Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, former co CEO of BlackBerry, as a toy phone.
But then BlackBerry also died, and the market was taken by iOS and Android devices.