LG’s Ambition
LG Electronics will launch a sales offensive to represent 10% of the global smartphone market.
With aggressive marketing for the LG G2, the company seeks to secure third place once and for all, following Samsung and Apple. In particular, it plans to make full-scale expansion into the Chinese market mainly with premium products.
“For continuous growth, it is necessary to comprise 10% of the global smartphone market,” said LG Electronics CFO Jung Do-hyun at the Oct. 24 Briefing on 2013 Third Quarter Results, held at LG Twin Towers in Seoul.
According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, LG only constitutes 5.2% of the global smartphone market as of Q2 this year. Thus, the company will focus on marketing for the LG G2 in order to achieve 10% market share.
CFO Jung commented, “We are planning to spend more money in marketing for mobile phones in the fourth quarter than the last one in order to increase sales and profits.” To attain this goal, he revealed a plan for the Chinese market with 4G LTE smartphones.
He added, “Our company will launch an aggressive online and offline marketing campaign, mainly with premium products. But right now, we are not expecting great sales results in the Chinese market.”
In the third quarter, 12 million units of LG smartphones were sold, which means that the figure in Q3 2013 went down compared to the second quarter this year (12.1 million units). The number of LG mobile phones sold in Q3 was up as much as 500,000 units from Q2, to record 18.3 million units in total.
In particular, 3 million units of 4G LTE smartphones were sold in Q3 this year, which was the highest-ever quarterly result since May 2011. The number of LG smartphones sold in Q1-Q3 2013 was 34.4 million units, already surpassing the annual figure for 2012 (26.2 million units).