Amid some unfortunate times for Microsoft’s Windows Phone, LG told the Korea Herald this morning that it has no plans in the foreseeable future to launch a new Windows Phone handset. Instead, the company is putting all of its effort behind Android.
What’s the reason? Well, LG made it short, sweet, and to the point. “The total unit of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure,” a representative stated. LG more than many other manufacturers decided a few years ago to focus on Windows Phone more than Android, but unfortunately the platform just isn’t catching on with consumers in the same way Android has been and as a result, the company has been losing money.
LG isn’t abandoning Windows Phone altogether though. It says it will “continue research and development efforts” with the operating system. The next generation OS, Windows Phone 8 codenamed Apollo, hopefully will provide some relief for Microsoft and these vendors. While the current Windows Phone actually is promising, it’s been hard to market as a worthy competitor to those Android powerhouses or the iPhone.
In other news, Nokia announced a few weeks ago that it sold 2 million Windows Phone devices first quarter out of 12 million total smartphones sold. That’s not really all that dreadful, but it’s not that great either. However, profits were absolutely pitiful so those 2 million Windows Phone handsets didn’t benefit Nokia in any way.
It seems this trend among Windows Phone vendors is very common and it’s one Microsoft needs to fix pronto.