LG chief said it will no longer set a regular timeline to launch smartphones as it has done over the past years, in an apparent strategic move to help its struggling smartphone business, which has been losing money for 11 straight quarters.
“We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do,” said LG Electronics Vice Chairman Cho Sung-jin during a press conference at CES.
He was responding to a question on when the firm would launch its new flagship smartphone LG G7.
“We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series,” Cho said.
LG’s mobile business has lost money 11 quarters in a row. Budget phones, rather than flagships, generate the bulk of LG’s mobile business earnings. The company is estimated to have lost about $650 million during the last three months of 2017. At CES 2018, the only phones on display at LG’s booth were last year’s V30 and V30+.
