Smartphones from this manufacturer will soon only be cheap Chinese goods

Review: Seven years ago, in the first quarter of 2013, LG sold more smartphones than Huawei worldwide. The Koreans were in third place behind Samsung and Apple. Since then, the group has been going downhill continuously. For more than seven years, the smartphone manufacturer has made losses every quarter. Now LG is pulling the rip cord.

Apparently LG wants to reinvent itself. According to a report by Reuters, the Korean manufacturer plans to outsource entry-level and mid-range smartphones and no longer manufacture them itself. So if you buy a cheap LG smartphone in the near future, you will get a device that only bears the name of the manufacturer. Blackberry is also following a similar path. The Canadians, once a top manufacturer of cell phones, now only make software. By mid-2020, however, new models with the name “Blackberry” came from the Chinese company TCL.

Is the new plan doomed to fail?

LG, however, wants to focus only on top-class smartphone models in the future. Can the Koreans find their way back to old strength? As a reminder: HTC also took this step. A few years ago the manufacturer announced that they only wanted to produce top models. The brand name was licensed. Today you can still buy cheap HTC smartphones in Russia or Vietnam. However, HTC has little to do with the final product. And after the once full-bodied promise, there is no trace of new luxury-class models.

Will cheap smartphones with the LG logo from China be able to compete with devices from Xiaomi, Oppo or Realme in the future? That question remains open. Likewise, whether LG will manage to bring a top model on the market that can compete with the current figureheads from Samsung, Xiaomi and Co.

Hardly anyone wants a smartphone from LG

If you look at LG’s upper-class smartphones from the past few years, you will see that the Korean devices have technical potential. And LG can also get involved in terms of price. The LG Velvet – with a high-performance processor, high-resolution OLED display and triple camera – is available from around 350 euros. This is even significantly cheaper than the current top model from Xiaomi. But why hardly anyone wants a smartphone from LG?

The update policy should play a major role here. LG is known for hardly providing any updates to its smartphones. The software – even on top models – is therefore quickly outdated. This is particularly important when it comes to security.