LG ships 59.1 million smartphones

Samsung may be stumbling after posting its lowest annual profit for three years. The same can’t be said for fellow Korean company LG, which just revealed that it posted an improved $475 million profit for 2014 after shipping a total of 59.1 million smartphones, a 24 percent increase on its previous year.

LG shipped a record 16.8 million smartphones in Q3 2014 — which was its best quarter of business for five years — but its total for the final quarter of last year dipped a little to reach 15.5 million. That was still its second biggest quarter of 2014.

LG Electronics’s net profit of $474.81 million is up 125 percent year-on-year. Its growing mobile business helped pull in year-long revenue of $55.91 billion, a more modest (but stable) one percent gain on 2013. LG actually posted a net loss of $189.41 million in Q4 2014 however, due to the costs of closing its plasma TV unit.

LG’s mobile business itself reported annual sales of $14.26 billion, up 16 percent year-on-year, for 2014. Its revenue in Q4 2014 rose five percent year-on-year to reach $3.48 billion.