Why Did LG Phones Really Die?

hey what's up mkbhd here you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain it's such a good quote mostly because it's true and in this case we just saw lg die a hero that's all so it's officially official lg is shutting down their smartphone business they will not be making any more smartphones um and when this news dropped a couple nights ago i bet most people were in one of two camps one oh bummer that's too bad or two oh lg was still making smartphones which is wild because not only did lg make smartphones but lg has made a lot of really influential phones that have had a direct impact on the phone you're probably holding right now so this is big news lg is a big company them leaving smartphones is pretty big news but how did this happen well we already know lg's been making phones for a long time and it's tempting to think if at least you're around my age that their heyday was probably in like the mid 2000s with phones like the lg voyager lg envy lg chocolate those were i know a lot of people that had those phones those are very popular phones my first ever smartphone was the lg voyager i'm considering this a smartphone and i started this channel when i had that phone and i even did a few videos about it but yeah lots of other people had various lg semi smartphones from around that time and i mean a lot of people 21 million people bought the lg chocolate but it might surprise you to know that their most popular android phone of all time was the g3 that came out in 2014 so that was their peak for smartphone stuff that phone sold 10 million units and their second most popular android phone of all time was the g2 and that sold around 3 million so clearly there was a decline lg never found those sales again they never had any single smartphone come out after that that competed on a massive scale in any price bracket they didn't have a hit budget phone they didn't really have anything that started doing numbers in the mid-range and they never really achieved much presence in the high-end market either as far as market share and all this was despite having a lot of the same specs and materials and features on paper as the ones that did find success but phone purge decisions are not made on paper and so my take is lg actually did make decent phones on paper but they did not know how to sell those phones like at all like what's the most basic art in the world of marketing naming stuff right just simple memorable understandable name and i'm definitely not saying all the other manufacturers have got naming down because they haven't but just having something simple easy to understand is important you know i know that iphone 12 pro does more than iphone 12 i know that the 12 is newer than the 11. i'm not saying naming your phone lg v60 thin q 5g made it a worse phone i'm just saying it didn't help i don't know why lg was so insistent on those extra words like thin q that doesn't mean anything to anyone here but they kept adding it anyway but okay just forgetting naming forget even what you might think of the software uh lg's phones never really got great marketing treatment they had pretty forgettable marketing to be perfectly honest and as many have pointed out found it kind of difficult to characterize lg phones which isn't necessarily a bad thing it's just forgettable it honestly kind of feels like a like a washer and a dryer it's like their marketing of their smartphones was right along the same lines as the marketing of their other appliances shining but the crazy thing is the actual character of lg phones over these years is really interesting and super low-key influential so over the past eight years or so i'd say lg has been one of the few companies that actually tries very new things like super wild things kind of anything really but that's been their sort of motto is just throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what'll stick and sometimes it really did stick look at this list in march 2007 we had lg prada that was the first capacitive touch screen smartphone pretty much every smartphone today has a capacitive touch screen in 2010 lg optimus 2x came out that was the first dual core processor smartphone ever and the first to do 1080p video recording then the next year lg optimus 3d was the first phone with more than one rear camera think about that when's the last time you saw a flagship with only one rear camera they also had the first quad core phone the lg optimus 4x then it gets serious in september 2013 lg g2 is the first phone to have double tap to wake at the time they just called it the knock knock feature that the first mass-produced qhd display in a phone that was the lg g3 then the v10 would technically be the first dual screen phone thanks to the second screen embedded up top maybe that's a stretch but there are some dual screen phones out now but then the lg g5 was the first phone with an ultra wide camera on the back then the g6 was the first with an 18 by 9 display having a little bit of that taller aspect ratio to keep it narrower and fit better in the hand and then v40 was the first phone with all three focal lengths on the back cameras one ultra wide one standard and one telephoto so it would be pretty easy to miss if you weren't paying attention but it turns out lg has been important as far as introducing new ideas that hooked and sort of got taken for granted today i don't know if you can even buy that many smartphones at the high end that don't have an ultra wide and tap to wake and a high resolution display these are all really good things that caught on that we see everywhere because they turned out to be good ideas but there were also plenty of things that didn't catch on like that mini display on the top of the v10 and v20 we don't really see that anymore this self-healing back on the back of the g flex really cool idea you don't really see that anymore either they tried curved phones for a while too because they were supposed to be more natural to holding your hand and up against your face that didn't last long they also had that one modular phone that one year with the g5 it was super cool but a year later they were done making modules for it and the whole ecosystem folded and then the g8 is the most memorable recent one for me so that had an ir sensor array for reading the veins in your hand and these weird gestures that barely worked when these things didn't catch on the next year they were gone they just dropped it it was just gone from the next phone and that makes sense but it's also kind of unnerving as a customer like what we look for in a long-term commitment to a phone is stability and reliability and consistency and at least being somewhat predictable that these things will be useful for a long time and so it's not likely you'll want to buy into an ecosystem of modules if you don't even know it'll be around the next year you know and that's not even considering lg's pretty bad track record of actually delivering software updates to their phones which just adds into the whole not very predictable stability thing now there's a lot of talk i've noticed about how maybe youtubers are responsible for lg's downfall because we didn't give them enough credit let's talk about that so i went back to check just because i was curious turns out i've done about 20 videos about lg smartphones over the past few years 20 videos and that's not including all of the nexuses i loved that lg also made one of the earliest videos i ever had go somewhat viral on this channel was my video on the self-healing of the lg g-flex from back in 2013. and believe it or not the most viewed single piece of content i have ever made happens to be me showing the lg wing to 32 million people on tick tock so the problem isn't a lack of coverage people talk about lg phones the real question a lot of people are asking is was this coverage fair because if you if you watched these videos you might still be wondering if lg got the credit they deserve so my take is there's a big difference between sharing a product with the world and giving it credit for something new or some innovation or an idea we haven't seen before versus reviewing and actually recommending a product overall to buy for a purchase decision two very different things and so what i've started to notice with that is i can speak for myself basically there's a big distinction between innovation and trying something new and being able to recommend something to a large variety of people and phones that do well in one bucket often don't do well in the other it goes both ways c sony for example i'll leave that video linked below and so i think over the years there's actually been a lot of giving lg credit for all of that trying new things and being unique especially with hardware because they clearly did a lot of that throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick every time they showed something interesting and new i was there to give it a shot and point a camera at it and share my findings with you all this self-healing g-flex was such a fun experiment the modular g5 design was a favorite it was impressively well thought out and the multiple cameras on the back of the v40 were fun right from the beginning even if the software features they built into that version to take advantage of them was a little wonky so yes absolutely checking the boxes in the innovation bucket and trying new things for sure but then when it came to reviews and actually deciding okay now do we recommend this thing to a large group of people lg phones as an overall package were always a little bit tough to recommend to those larger groups even recently uh v60 pretty great overall phone but a 60 hertz display in a flagship when all the competition had moved on to higher fresh rate was tough or even lg wing was cool as hell but 765g in a thousand dollar phone was kind of tough to recommend and it just continues as you go back lg g8 might be the most perfect example of an lg smartphone from the past few years possible like this was a really solid phone right high-end chip pretty solid design very modest of course no camera bump kept the headphone jack with the quad dac kept expandable storage decent battery and the killer feature vane id yeah that was the new thing they decided to throw out the wall so the extra big notch in a phone of this year had a time-of-flight sensor an infrared sensor and receiver to identify your hand and let you do gestures over the phone with your hand and it really didn't work that well at all you should have seen the room full of journalists and youtubers and pr reps all with this brand new phone as we're trying to make our videos about it everyone's trying to do the thing to get it to work and no one can even we're a room full of professionals even trained professionals from lg are like if you just get it just it was brutal so if you're gonna share that phone you're gonna do one of two things one is give it credit for actually trying something new and maybe it's a it's a weird unusual set of sensors we've never seen before but highlighting the cool thing or reviewing it and like packaging it all overall to see if it's actually worth buying versus a competition for most people and look i called it in my review the jack of all trades and master of none which i thought was true but also apparently was pretty harsh apparently people thought i was being a little too hard on the phone i didn't really think so i was also far from the most negative take on the g8 but here's the thing the point is when you take a step back the most innovative unique unproven stuff that you do in your gadget is almost by definition useful to the smallest number of people and this is true for every phone manufacturer now normally this isn't a huge problem because if the smartphone company is making money somewhere then yeah they can designate one of their lines to be the unique innovative taking one like samsung is a perfect example of this they have their money making flagships so those don't take big risks so they crank out all kinds of risky unproven foldy ideas in other product lines just to kind of see what sticks xiaomi has their money making phones so the mix series is specifically consistently the one where they try out their wild designs vivo if you've noticed is basically oppo group's innovation brand so with lg and this is my own analysis i don't i haven't seen their books but they didn't really have a steady consistent money maker they didn't have some other smartphone that was winning them lots of market share so they could afford to subsidize a risk-taking one their main line was the fun one it was the risk-taking one and so this was just a straight business decision so you can read the official lg press release explaining why they left the smartphone market and it has this statement which is lg's strategic decision to exit the incredibly competitive mobile phone sector will enable the company to focus resources in growth areas like electric vehicle components connected devices smart homes robotics ai and business to business solutions as well as platforms and services so basic translation lg does a bunch of other stuff as a company monitors tvs appliances we already know and so cutting off the smartphone division that was losing money is just a decision that allows them to focus on other things that might grow up more so what happens now well uh if you were thinking about buying an lg phone don't uh if you already have an lg phone uh you can check the list there's they've promised a small list of phones we'll continue to get i guess one more update up to the android 12 update we'll see hopefully they can support phones as long as they can before they disappear but there's definitely there's a lot of talent and a lot of patents over there what they decide to do with that infrastructure is anybody's guess but i think the moral of the story of lg is innovation and trying new things and risk taking is great but it requires a balance of also some stability and long-term consistency and lg just wasn't quite able to strike that balance but the real bummer is losing lg is an l for all of us just because that is it's a competitor that's that's one less set of cool ideas that's going to be tried out like who knows how many other ultra wide or multiple camera type ideas that they would have had that we won't get to see now and that's one less competitor to incentivize the other bigger companies to really keep their stuff together and and win over our business so we've lost other smartphone companies before but lg feels like the biggest one as of late feels like the biggest space the biggest void being left in the market anyway the point of this video isn't for me to like defend myself like i killed lg but you know the the question of what happened to lg isn't just explained away by saying oh the big youtubers didn't give lg enough credit the truth is always more nuanced than that even if you believe that to be true and this truth is this was a business decision that lg was probably thinking about for a long time so you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain and lg just died a hero rip lg smartphones you'll be missed not because we were all using your phones but because you did move the needle uh that's been pretty much it shout out to mr mobile who's also dropping a sort of a retrospective video looking back at some of lg's finer moments i saw he was working on it i haven't seen the video yet but i'm gonna link it below when he does drop it because i imagine it'll be pretty good either way that's been it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one [Music] peace

Channel: Marques Brownlee

Views: 2,123,778

Rating: 4.9392514 out of 5

Keywords: LG phones, lg smartphones, LG, LG Wing, LG velvet, rollable, LG update, LG dies, RIP LG, MKBHD, LG exits, smartphone business, no more LG phones, LG phone

Id: CAmZXCZ-e94

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Blackadder18]

One massive point he doesn't touch on is that after the G4, LG stopped being consistent with the availability of their phones and in some cases key features. The G5 didn't have all it's modules available in all markets, when there's only like 3, this is a big problem. LG G6 had different specs in different markets, one didn't have the Quad DAC that is so often touted as a major selling point. And then with the G7 (or G8 I can't remember) they didn't release in all markets, with some markets even reviewing cutdown versions of the major flagship but sold at similar prices. I feel this was an issue that just snowballed, people would be ready for a phone upgrade one year, see LG offering an inferior version of a phone than other countries (or no phone at all in some cases) ans go with another brand. By the time their next upgrade came along, they'd either gotten used to whatever they switched to or noticed a similar issue with LG's offerings that time too.

Another major element not touched on is that one of their biggest competitors, Samsung, didn't really get itself together until the S6. And ever since then has been cranking out top tier phones that most people are happy with. I don't think it's a coincedence that LGs best performing Android phones were the G3 and G2. This was back when Samsung were less focussed, and provided a less compelling phone that stood well above others. The S6 came out the same year as the G4, and gimmick or not the S6 edge caught people's attention and propelled Samsung even further along. Following the G4 is when they really needed to start doubling down, and yet circling back to my original point, is when they started to slip up.

[u/JayRU09]

I mean I get it that LG phones often have had issues that kept them from being easy phones to recommend, but I find using the G8 as the example of that as being quite odd.

Ok, the motion controls aren't great. You can also ignore them, and then you're left with the one phone at the time without a camera hump that had a headphone jack that also did not have many noticeable drawbacks.

[u/FragmentedChicken]

The only thing I would point out is that yes the LG G8 vein ID was gimmicky but those sensors enabled secure face unlock which isn't present on many Android phones

[u/Frothar]

The LG wing might about to be an incredible bargain if you don't care about software updates, so basically not this subreddit but personally I have never really cared. They were sub £550 in the UK a couple weeks back

[u/poopyheadthrowaway]

You can either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain

That's what a lot of people said about the OP8(P).

Example

[u/BirdsNoSkill]

I loved my G4. Just that why buy anything other than Samsung or Apple past that at least if you're in the USA. I think he is spot on in the sense that LG(and probably other manufacturers that are struggling right now) can't match the consistency of Apple/Samsung as a overall package. On top of atrocious marketing.

[u/Real-Paul-Walker]

he responds to juan the LG fanboy at 7:36

[u/NXGZ]

HTC, LG, Blackberry, Nokia. I wonder who is next in line to leave the smartphone division. I say Sony.

[u/vortexmak]

Bootloops killed LG for me.

Between my family and I we used 4 LG phones. All of them did one by one. Swore never to buy an LG again.

All my Samsung's are still going strong