Enlarge / The LG G6.
Another year, another proclamation from LG that its flagship smartphone isn’t selling as well as expected. Last year it was the LG G5, when the company blamed a bad quarter on “weak sales of [the] G5.” The year before that, it was the LG G4, which had sales that “fell short of expectations.” This year it’s the LG G6—in its latest earnings report, LG blamed the “challenging” quarter on “weaker than expected premium smartphone sales and increase in component costs.”
A a whole, LG is doing fine, with the company reporting that “Three of the company’s four main business units reported higher revenues than a year ago.” Home Appliances, Home Entertainment, and Vehicle components are the three seeing improvements, while the mobile division is lagging behind.
LG’s strategy with the G6 never made a ton of sense, seeming like it was only aiming for “second place” behind Samsung. LG launched the G6 in 2017 but used Qualcomm’s old 2016 SoC, the Snapdragon 821. At the launch event for the G6, LG said it shipped last year’s SoC in this year’s phone in a bid to get to market faster than the Snapdragon 835 devices. By the time LG finally got around to launching the G6 in the US, though, it was already one week after the Galaxy S8 launch event. If LG had planned to beat Samsung and other Snapdragon 835 devices to market, that lead seemed to have evaporated at some point. The G6 technically had a three-week head start on the S8, but by the time the G6 was available the S8 launch event already happened, the phone was unveiled, and Samsung was already taking preorders.
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