LG Phone Sales Falter

Korea’s LG shipped a (then) record 14.5 million smartphones in the second quarter of 2014, but now, a year later, it’s a different story. The firm just revealed its Q2 2015 financials and, while not as disastrous as HTC’s, the company itself describes them as “modest.”

The firm, which enjoyed a pretty stellar 2014 during which it doubled profits and shipped 59 million phones, shipped 14.1 million in the last quarter of business which translated to sales of KRW 3.65 trillion ($3.33 billion), a meagre 1 percent increase year-on-year. (It shipped 15.5 million in Q4 2014, and 15.4 million in Q1 2015.)

Calling the last quarter “extremely challenging” across all segments of its business, LG admitted that the market for premium smartphones suffered from lower demand. That said, it claimed to have increased revenue in North America by more than one-third — thanks to its mid-range phones and tablets — while it sold a record 8.1 million LTE smartphones in the quarter.

The company has outed a number of new phones designed to complement its flagship G4, including the G4 Beat, G4 Stylus and G4c — not to mention a mid-range phone for emerging markets. Along that line, the company said it will “more aggressively implement its dual strategy focusing on both premium devices, as well as mid-range smartphones.”