As the fourth month of the year comes to a close, many companies have been disclosing their final figures for Q1 2016, and while Apple has suffered quite substantially, Samsung has had a great quarter, LG isn’t doing so well. The LG G5 not only launched late, but has failed to experience the same sort of runaway success as the Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. While LG Electronics as a whole has posted some operating profit, the LG Mobile Communications department is posting a decline in profits and shipments, so it’s clear that these figures point LG out as someone not quite able to challenge the likes of Apple and Samsung, or even some of the bigger Chinese names out there.
For Q1 2016, LG Mobile Communications posted a 3% decline compared to the Q4 2015 figures as well as a 19% decline in revenue since Q4 2015. LG says that the advertizing costs for the new G5 had helped the slump in revenue, but also a lack of interest from American networks and the late launch of the G5 itself. All-in-all, LG shipped 13.5 Million smartphones during Q1 2016, a 12% drop from Q4 2015. It’s important to remember here that Q1 2016 hasn’t seen much of the G5 hit shelves as it launched right towards the end of the January to March period and LG expects the G5 to help boost their Q2 2016 figures into something a little more respectable. LG had to write off roughly $170 Million in costs, which is offset by LG Electronics’ operating profit of $420 Million. Other factors have attributed to this as well, such as economic instability in Latin America, a region that LG has turned to in the past to drive growth selling budget devices.
So, all-in-all, LG’s mobile division isn’t doing quite as well as we’d have thought, but the G5 has yet to really get going. Pre-orders started late into the quarter and it didn’t hit shelves until the end of the quarter. Hopefully, their modular flagship can help them post better Q2 figures, as right now the South Korean firm doesn’t appear to have hit the high targets that analysts had banded around earlier in the quarter and compared to Samsung and Apple, these figures are but a drop in the ocean.