A report from South Korea back in July of this year revealed that the LG G4 was not only selling poorly in its home country but it was also not meeting the company’s sales expectations. This resulted in analysts such as NH Investments & Securities and Korea Investment & Securities to lower the expectations for LG’s Q2 profit by about $40-$50 million.
Despite this seemingly bad news, a recent report from South Korea revealed that the LG G4 is selling much better in the U.S., even better than it’s predecessor, the LG G3. Because of this, LG seems to have increased its shares in North America at the end of Q2 2015, a significant improvement over Q2 2014 as compared to competitor Samsung whose market share decreased during the same quarter.
The LG G4 is an interesting device, not only in terms of aesthetics and material choice but also in terms of specifications, most notably the choice of processor. Unlike most flagship phones which has the Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 SoC, the LG G4 chose to go with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 SoC instead, a less powerful chip (on paper) as compared to the 810. It also came with an optional leather back cover, a slightly curved display and one of the most powerful cameras with laser autofocus function. All of this coupled by the fact that it was relatively cheaper than its competitors sets it apart from other flagship devices such as the Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Apple iPhone 6.
South Korean media also revealed that the LG G4 sold much better than the LG G3 which was released last year(about one million units were sold during the first three months), this success could be due to the fact that LG was able to come up with a unique and powerful device but sell it at a very competitive price. This would have also contributed greatly to the increase in market share in North America to about 15% from last year’s 11.9%. On the other hand, Samsung, which is also a Korean based company and the country’s top smartphone maker saw a decrease in market share in the same quarter from 36.2% to 26.2%