07/21/2008, 7:55am, EDT
Monday, July 21stLG sells 7m touchscreen phones, claims lead
LG on Monday revealed that it has sold about seven million touchscreen cellphones since the company first introduced a full touch device through the Prada Phone in early 2007. The company claims to have the "leadership" of the category and notes that two million of these are the KU990 Viewty cameraphone; the next most popular devices are the North America-focused Venus and Voyager at 1.6 million and 1.3 million examples each, according to the company. The remaining 2.1 million are split between the Vu as well as models that are largely only available in Europe or Korea.
The firm also touts the high average selling price of $530 and that these touchscreen phones helped boost LG's name in other countries, with recognition jumping from about 65.1 percent to 83.1 percent in the US.
LG's assertion of the lead comes shortly after Apple reports selling a million iPhone 3G units on its first week of sale and on the back of a total of six million sales of the original model, matching the Korean rival's figure despite launching its first touchscreen phones a few months later. The new iPhone sales won't be factored into Apple's latest quarterly results, which account for the period ending in June.
Korea-based LG is nonetheless one of the largest manufacturers of any cellphone type and reports selling 27.7 million phones in the April-to-June quarter, pushing past Sony Ericsson's 24.4 million. The electronics giant is likely to assume third place in world market share after Nokia's 122 million phones and Samsung's expected higher numbers. These two companies have both seen their average selling prices drop as their sales balance shifts to lower-cost phones.
Filed under: iPhone, industry
Other story tags: iPhone 3G, Nokia, LG, Sony Ericsson, Prada, Viewty, Vu, Voyager, Venus
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It's amazing how
LG can sell so many handsets and never have any lines. Better distribution, maybe. More even demand. None of the instant peak demand that the iPhone has. If the rumor of iPhone stock being limited, that's a fairly ugly problem for Apple.
Nice problem
In my opinion, selling out of a product ahead of schedule is a very nice problem.
A bigger question
Is whether these users would purchase another LG device - i.e. customer satisfaction. As a KU990 owner I'm contributing to their wonderful sales figures, but will never purchase another LG product in my life.
A bigger question
Is whether these users would purchase another LG device - i.e. customer satisfaction. As a KU990 owner I'm contributing to their wonderful sales figures, but will never purchase another LG product in my life. Glitchy, poorly designed firmware, lousy electronics and zero customer service. Beat that one Apple!
RE: It's amazing how
It's not amazing, because unlike iPhone 7M phones for LG is the total number of several different models sold at different price points. If LG sold 7M of just one model, or at least models of a closely related family we would have heard about this hit many many times over. It's sounds like comparing all Nokia phones against iPhone... fair to the point, that iPhone is all Apple has on the phone arena.
Worst phone ever
The worst user interface ever can be found on a LG product. Why anyone would buy one of their devices is beyond me.
Re: Nice Problem
Not really. It means at least one of the following probably happened:
-they got the sales forecasts way wrong
-they have supply chain problems
-they can't produce them fast enough
Unless the sellout was engineered, it means they potentially lost out on some profits by either producing more or increasing price to match demand.
But I don't care anymore...I've got mine!
It's no choice
I'm curious about which carrier sold the bulk of these. I'm currently unable to get an iPhone as there is no ATT in my area, so I was seriously looking at what the other options that verizon had. After taking a seriously hard look at these, well, it's no iPhone, but I looked and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these LGs are sold by verizon and uneducated consumers thinking they'll be getting an iPhone like experience with it. In fact, I have a co-worker whom just moved up here and switched to verizon from sprint (verizon has better coverage here). He got the LG Voyager and he hasn't got a clue about how it works, horrible interface both touch and button. He was looking for that iPhone experience, he's now wishing he had just gotten a regular cell phone. The iPhone is more than just a touch screen phone, it's a mac OS and a mac ui.
re: slider
Perhaps no carrier sold the bulk of them. Given that there are many, many carriers out here in the real world, and LG sell through many of them, it would easily add up to 7 million.
I know to some people think that the world ends at their borders, but there are over a billion people in China and slightly less in India. Europe has hundreds of millions of mobile phone users. 7 million is easily achievable. Nokia sell that many in days!
Re: Worst phone ever
I have yet to meet anyone who bought an LG phone and a month later is still in love with it.
Most of the people I know who buy an LG phone originally had crappy Moto phones or something really basic. So going to an LG touchscreen exposes them to quite a few new features. It also exposes them to all the problems with touchscreen phones that the iPhone fixes handily and that LG and competitors have been unable to address. Namely slow touchscreen response, poor UI, and crappy Verizon software. So thanks LG for helping expose more people to touchscreen phones and eventually driving them towards Apple!