Before LG goes head on full force this year, the South Korean tech giant released its financial reports for the last quarter of 2015 and for the whole year. Good news as LG reached a $301.38 million or KRW 349 billion operating profit. That’s a 27% increase from the same quarter the previous year. This improvement isn’t because of the mobile business though but due to LG’s home entertainment products and home appliances.
LG’s Home Appliance & Air Solution Company specifically did well during the last quarter having a $185.49 million income (KRW 214.8 billion). Comparing the amount with the previous year same period, that’s an impressive 57% increase. Sales reached $12.57 billion across all LG businesses in Q4 2015–a 3.8% increase year-on-year. Unfortunately with some currency changes, there’s a small 4.7% decline in revenue.
LG ended the year on a positive note but not without facing many challenges. Phone market growth was quite slow but the company survived and its handsets did well. Demand for TVs was also small but LG still managed to see a $48.8 billion (KRW 56.51 trillion) full-year revenue. That’s still a lot of money but a bit lower than 2014’s $50.98 billion. Increase in revenues was largely because of the improvement in numbers of OLED and UHD TVs. It may improve some more this year as LG is poised to release Super 4K Ultra HD and new OLED TV models.
As for mobile communications, sales grew to 12% compared to the 3rd quarter but remained the same year-on-year, thanks to sales increase in North America. According to LG, they shipped 15.3 million LG handsets in Q4. Total number of smartphones shipped reached 59.7 million units—up from 59.1M in 2014.
Year 2016 is expected to be very competitive for the mobile industry. More premium models with hopefully lower prices can be anticipated. LG’s line-up for this year include the LG G5 and the next V10 plus the new K series phones. Usually, LG releases only one flagship phone each–the G series. But since the V10 was introduced last year, we can expect another one to be unveiled during the 2nd half of 2016. We’re crossing our fingers this will be a good year not only for LG but also for the other phone manufacturers as well.
SOURCE: LG
