Fresh reports coming in from South Korea suggest LG is pondering a big reshuffle of its loss-making smartphone business. The big news is that the conglomerate might stop following the standard 1-year launch cycle of its flagship series phones soon. LG Electronics Vice Chairman Cho Sung-jin was quoted as saying at the CES, “We will unveil new smartphones when it is needed. But we will not launch it just because other rivals do. We plan to retain existing models longer by, for instance, unveiling more variant models of the G series or V series.”
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This is a clear indication that the brand is keen to stop losses in its smartphone business which has been bleeding money for the last 11 years. Among other related info, the phone maker might also be planning to replace the G series or at least introduce a new one with the brand name “Icon”.
The company has filed multiple trademarks under the names: LG Icon, Aicon, and Aiconn. As initially reported by Evan Blass, they’ve also applied for a trademark of the name “Iconic” in the database of USPTO.
Now, these trademarks do not necessarily mean that LG will use these new nomenclatures as a future new series. Companies like LG keep and discard patents regularly but the timing of the info suggests that we might see a new series from them. Yet other reports from the Korean peninsula say that there will be no LG G7 this year. As of now, the company hasn’t come clean on the LG G7. Stay tuned as there will be more to this story in the near future.
