LG will reportedly announce closure of smartphone business on April 5

LG has struggled to maintain prominence in the competitive mobile market. As a result, the company is reportedly preparing to announce that it will shutter is smartphone business.

According to The Korea Times, LG will announce that it will pull out of the smartphone market on April 5 after failing to turn a profit these past few years.

“LG Electronics appears to have decided to pull out of its money-losing smartphone business and entered into a transition process to relocate its mobile communications employees to other business units,” The Korea Times said.

LG has suffered operating losses since 2015, and despite churning out some truly innovative devices, the company hasn’t been able to turn its mobile business around. The company attempted to find a buyer, allegedly entertaining interest from Volkswagen and Vietnam’s Vingroup JSC, but the talks seemingly didn’t pan out.

As recently as January, an LG spokesperson said the company wasn’t shutting down its mobile business. And, in fact, there were reports LG was working on new devices for this year, even teasing a rollable smartphone a few months back. The LG Rollable, as it was tentatively called, was expected to offer a “unique resizable screen” that was capable of transforming.

If LG is indeed shuttering its mobile business, it means whatever it had planned for 2021 has been scrapped. LG’s absence from the Android market would be a huge loss for the industry, because the company has come up with a lot of great ideas. LG also helped create legendary phones like the Nexus 5 and Pixel 2 XL.

“All we can say is that every possibility is open,” a company spokesperson told The Korea Times. “Although we cannot confirm that right now, we will announce the specific direction of our mobile communications business.”

For now, we’ll wait for official confirmation from LG about its future mobile plans. Today is April 1, which is tricky when reporting on major news. With an announcement allegedly coming on April 5, it won’t be much longer before we know one way or the other.

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