cross pond high tech

LG Electronic’s smartphone division has had six years of losses totalling US$4.5 billion The company’s smartphone division is expected to be wound down by July 31, 2021

But later, its flagship models suffered from both software and hardware mishaps which combined with slower software updates saw the brand steadily slip in favour. Analysts have also criticised the company for lack of expertise in marketing compared to
Chinese brands

Currently its global share is only about 2 per cent. It shipped 23 million phones last year which compares with 256 million for Samsung, according to research provider Counterpoint.

In addition to North America, it does have a sizeable presence in Latin America, where it ranks as the No 5 brand.

“In South America, Samsung and Chinese companies such as
Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi are expected to benefit in the low to mid-end segment,” said Park Sung-soon, an analyst at Cape Investment & Securities.

 

While other well-known mobile brands such as Nokia, HTC and BlackBerry have also fallen from lofty heights, they have yet to disappear completely.

LG’s smartphone division – the smallest of its five divisions, accounting for about 7 per cent of revenue – is expected to be wound down by July 31.

 

In South Korea, the division’s employees will be moved to other LG Electronics businesses and affiliates while elsewhere decisions on employment will be made at the local level.

LG will provide service support and software updates for customers of existing mobile products for a period of time which will vary by region, it added.

 

Talks to sell part of the business to Vietnam’s Vingroup fell through due to differences about terms, sources with knowledge of the matter have said.

It was just four days after Christmas 2014, and for Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi, the presents kept on coming as it announced a funding round of $1.1 billion (£850 million) at a valuation of $45bn. Just 18 months on from Xiaomi's last funding round, new analysis of its business suggests it is worth less than $4 billion. So what happened to the world's once most valuable startup?

Xiaomi’s Mi Mix series has always pushed the boundaries of phone screens and form factors, from the original model that kicked off the bezel wars to last year’s sliding, notchless Mi Mix 3. Now, just as we’re starting to see “waterfall” displays with extreme curved edges, Xiaomi is taking this to a wild new level with the Mi Mix Alpha.

The “surround screen” on the Alpha wraps entirely around the device to the point where it meets the camera module on the other side. The effect is of a phone that’s almost completely made of screen, with status icons like network signal and battery charge level displayed on the side. Pressure-sensitive volume buttons are also shown on the side of the phone. Xiaomi is claiming more than 180 percent screen-to-body ratio, a stat that no longer makes any sense to cite at all.

The Mix Alpha uses Samsung’s new 108-megapixel camera sensor, which was co-developed with Xiaomi. As with other recent high-resolution Samsung sensors, pixels are combined into 2x2 squares for better light sensitivity in low light, which in this case will produce 27-megapixel images.

We’ll have to see how that works in practice, but the 1/1.33-inch sensor is unusually large for a phone and should give the Mix Alpha a lot of light-gathering capability. There’s also no need for a selfie camera — you just turn the phone around and use the rear portion of the display as a viewfinder for the 108-megapixel shooter.