LG has just announced that the Optimus LTE has sold more than 1 million units. At fist glance that sounds like an awesome achievement, but looking at the numbers closely reveals some incredibly lackluster sales. First, the device went on sale in October 2011, meaning it’s been out on the market for 3 months. That would mean less than 350,000 units sold per month. Second, LG specially says that the device sold 600,000 units in South Korea. That would mean just 400,000 units left to be split among the three other countries where the device is available: the United States, Canada, and Japan. Forgetting about Canada and Japan for a second (such an American thing to say!), assume those 400,000 units were sold exclusively in the United States. That’s less than 135,000 units per month. How on earth do you call that a success?
For those of you who don’t know much about the Optimus LTE, it’s one of the few phones on the market to ship with a 1280 x 720 pixel resolution display. Unlike the Samsung Galaxy Nexus that measures 4.65 inches across, the Optimus LTE is a more manageable, but still hefty, 4.5 inches. Even better, the Optimus LTE doesn’t use PenTile technology, so the screen has improved color reproduction. Other than that … the Optimus LTE runs Gingerbread, has a terrible Android skin on top, and the 8 megapixel camera on board is incredibly average.
What does LG have to do to impress us and the rest of the world? It’s not really that hard. Take off the terrible Android skin, go stock, use better materials, hire some better hardware designers, and that’s it. There used to be a time when LG and Samsung where neck and neck in the mobile phone market. These days it’s Samsung who is on top of the world and LG who is nearly out of business.
What the hell happened?