LG to announce closure of smartphone business on April 5

LG has struggled to maintain its dominant position in the competitive mobile phone market. As a result, the company is reportedly preparing to announce that it will end its smartphone business.

According to The Korea Times, LG will announce that it will pull out of the smartphone market on April 5 after failing to make a profit in recent years.

“LG Electronics appears to have decided to exit its money-losing smartphone business and has entered a transition process to move its mobile communications employees to other business units,” The Korea Times said.

LG has suffered operating losses since 2015, and despite producing truly innovative devices, the company has not been able to turn around its mobile business. The company has tried to find a buyer, which is said to have sparked interest from Volkswagen and Vietnamese Vingroup JSC, but talks have apparently failed.

As recently as January, a spokesperson for LG said the company was not shutting down its mobile operations. And, in fact, there have been reports that LG was working on new devices for this year, even teasing a rollable smartphone a few months ago. The LG Rollable, as it was tentatively called, was to offer a “single resizable screen” capable of transforming.

If LG does shut down its mobile business, that means everything it had planned for 2021 has been dropped. LG’s absence from the Android market would be a huge loss for the industry as the company came up with a lot of great ideas. LG has also helped create legendary phones like the Nexus 5 and the Pixel 2 XL.

“All we can say is that all possibilities are open,” said a spokesperson for the company. The Korea Times. “Although we cannot confirm at this time, we will announce the specific direction of our mobile communications business.”

For now, we will await official confirmation from LG regarding its future mobile plans. Today is April 1, which is difficult to report on major news. With an announcement set to take place on April 5, it won’t be long before we know one way or another.