LG is ready to begin a retail store expansion. The company currently has roughly 3,000 retail locations and they look to increase this by 20 percent this year. These retail shops, dubbed LG brand shops will be popping up in emerging markets to include India, the Middle East and Africa. These shops will be showing a variety of LG products including everything from smartphones and televisions to home appliances.

Speaking of the products though, it looks like a focus will be on mobile phones. LG Executive Vice President Kim Ki-wan has recently said that “mobile phones now play a decisive role in shaping the company’s brand.” In fact, he believes that a good marketing strategy for smartphones will have an effect on the sales of other LG products. Basically, get them in the door with a smartphone purchase.

LG has recently introduced a few notable smartphones, one of which includes the Optimus G Pro which saw half-a-million sales from Korea in just 40 days. That same handset was later released in Japan, however we have yet to see any Japanese sales figures. Moving further into emerging markets certainly sounds like a good strategy, however not necessarily a complete strategy — at least not when competing against other smartphones such as those from Samsung and Apple.

On that front, LG is looking to boost smartphone sales by 50 percent this year and seem to have just begun to come into their own. Further comments from Mr. Kim tell the story about how LG “finally started making products last year that are competitive enough and in some ways are better than others.” Now it seems like they just need to put this all into play. In the meantime, make sure to hit the Story Timeline below for some additional LG coverage.

[via SlashGear]