Who said Android devices are struggling? Definitely not LG.
LG Electronics posted impressive figures for the second quarter of the year, reporting a whopping 165 percent in net profits compared to the same quarter last year. This translates to $399.8 million in earnings, reflecting strong activity for the company's mobile and TV business. Operating profit also increased year-over-year by 26.5 percent, settling at $588.5 million for the quarter.
LG's divisions are generally performing well, but most impressive is its mobile business that shipped 14.5 million smartphone units for this period alone, a record figure for the company. More than a third of smartphones that were sold for 2014 so far were LTE products, contributing to the 20 percent boost the division logged for year-over-year performance. This also resulted in sales that that are higher by 16 percent for the same quarter last year, translating to $3.51 billion in earnings, the highest recorded by LG since first quarter of 2010.
With an operating profit of $83.4 million, LG's mobile division finally put a stop to three quarters of consecutive losses.
"Much of the success was due to the initial popularity of the LG G3 in the Korean market and strong sales of L Series III smartphones," the company said in a statement.
The company plans to continue bringing the G3 to the world while at the same time introducing more mass-tiered products in the second half of the year, including variants of the LG G3, like the G2 Beat, and additional models for the L Series.
The G3 Beat is a smaller version of the flagship G3, a 5-incher fitted with 1GB RAM, a 1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 8GB of memory. It will, of course, have many of the G3's features like the Smart Keyboard, QuickMemo+ and gesture shots and will ship running Android 4.4.1. Available in Shine Gold, Silk White and Metallic Black colors, the G3 Beat went on sale in Korea last July 18. It will be sold in the coming weeks in Europe and Russia where it will be known as the G3 S before landing in other markets around the world.
LG's home entertainment division saw $4.94 billion in revenues, while the home appliance and air conditioning and energy solution divisions reported $2.94 billion and $1.59 billion in revenues, respectively. Unaudited consolidated revenues for the company total $14.93 billion, a 7.7 increase from the last quarter.
