LG has just published their financial results for the last quarter of 2013. Unlike other Android handset makers that I won’t name, LG actually says how many phones they’ve sold: 13.2 million. That’s up 54% from the same quarter a year ago. Revenues hit $3.38 billion, so if you do some basic maths, that means the average selling price for an LG phone during the holiday quarter was $256. When you consider that all the growth in smartphones these days is in the low end, that number is quite impressive.
Where does the company go from here? LG has already published a press release saying they’re going to unveil the G Pro 2 at Mobile World Congress next month. You can expect it to have bleeding edge specifications, but that’s probably not enough. Every time I use an LG phone, I’m left with a feeling that it’s 90% there, but no one at LG wants to invest in that extra 10% to make the device truly amazing. All LG needs to do to win, and I’ve said this for several other companies as well, is to pull a Motorola and sell their devices as close to stock as possible. Bundle a few extra applications, sure, but don’t go too crazy. And those apps that you do add, make them both un-installable and upgradeable via the Google Play Store. No more of this LG Store nonsense, because that’s just confusing users. Is it so hard to ask for a streamlined user experience?
