LG shrinks losses thanks to strong TV sales, promises new flagship phone next month
LG doubled its profits in the last year -- and it's thanking an apparent boom in HDTV sales, not its mobile wares. From October to December 2013, the company made an operating profit of $220 million (238 billion won), more than doubling the operating profit from its TV range, but saw a net loss for the quarter of $59 million (64 billion won). Meanwhile, mobile (including both smartphones and the company's return to tablets) went from profit maker to loss maker in the space of a year, with an operating loss in Q4 2013 of $40 million (43 billion won). That operating loss has been partly blamed on marketing spending, with LG advertising more aggressively for flagship phones like the LG G2 and the G Flex in the last 12 months. LG's quarterly smartphone unit sales totaled 13.2 million units: more than a 50 percent increase from the same period last year.
The company has also announced that it'll have a new G Pro model, the G Pro 2, to add to the flagship lineup in February -- presumably ready for when MWC 2014 kicks off in Barcelona -- although it's not specifying, well, anything about the new smartphone yet. LG also expects 2014 to be the year of OLED (although not flexible ones ), with the nascent screen tech becoming its "main growth driver" in TV and replacing LED sets in the process.
