It seems like LG’s year wasn’t as good as the company might have hoped. While the LG G6 was almost universally well-received, that good reception apparently didn’t translate into great sales — making this just another year in a string of rough years for the company.
As you might recall, last year it was the LG G5 that was blamed for LG’s lackluster sales, but that was a little more expected considering the fact that many reviewers didn’t like the G5 as much. Before that, the G4’s sales also “fell short of expectations.”
Of course, in general LG is doing fine. Smartphones are just one of LG’s businesses, and the company reported in its earnings call that three of its four major business units reported higher revenues this year than last year.
It’s not all that surprising that the G6 had some troubles. LG seems to have timed the release of the phone terribly. Because it released the phone in the first quarter of 2017, it was forced to use Qualcomm’s older chip, the Snapdragon 821 — while other flagships that were launched later this year instead used the Snapdragon 835. The reason for that was that the company was trying to get to market faster the the Snapdragon 835 devices — but by the time the phone was available in the U.S., the Samsung Galaxy S8, with the Snapdragon 835, had already been announced.
Once the Galaxy S8 was launched, we can’t imagine too many people opted instead for the G6. The Galaxy S8 is better than the G6 in almost every way, especially when it comes to power under the hood.
In any case, hopefully LG has finally learned its lesson. It will be very interesting to see what the company comes up with next year, and we can’t forget about the heavily rumored LG V30, which will serve as a follow up to the LG V20 and will be available later this year. The V30 will take advantage of the latest Qualcomm chip, and may be coupled with a hefty 6GB of RAM — which would make it one of the more powerful phones on the market.