LG leaving Android is not good for anyone – except LG

You may not remember, but there was a time when LG was an Android powerhouse, producing the best Android phones that money could buy. Phones like the LG G2 were cutting edge, while cheap and powerful phones like the Optimus G provided more return on investment than anything done today. Choose almost any phone manufactured by LG during that time and you saw three things:

• This phone is tough as nails.
• This phone is very fast.
• The version of Android LG built for this phone was garbage.

Now, LG probably just finished building phones because there is no money to be made from it. Some people in the company say no, others have more information about everything and other companies are even ready to buy. Whatever happens, it will mean the death of LG as we know it today.

This is not really surprising if you look at which phones sell, how they are sold and why people buy them – and you see LG losing in all categories.

We are an Android site and collectively we know everything there is to know about Android. Yes, it is a very big and bold statement, but it is true. Just because we’re not writing all the little technical things and looking at the big picture, it doesn’t mean that we don’t understand all the little technical things. We are also a Mobile site and is not afraid to talk about the phone that everyone seems to love and hate: the iPhone. You can’t talk about the imminent demise of LG’s mobile division without talking about the cell phone as a whole.

“Mobile” has many companies, but only three earn all that money.

The cell phone as a technology category for the consumer is strange. The three companies that hold all the interest and make all the profits are Apple, Google and Samsung. Google likes to earn all your money in the shadows, but if you want to take your credit card and walk out the door to buy the best smartphone you can buy today, be sure to buy some variant of the Galaxy S21 or iPhone 12 This is a piece of advice from Android Central, a company that makes all of its profit by looking at each phone and evaluating how they do the things that Apple and Samsung say the best smartphone needs to do.

But what if you don’t worry about having best phone on the market and just need a good phone? We have an entire “bible” for Android phone buyers, where we evaluate everything from phones to VPN software and accessories that matter. Once you’re done reading, you’ll probably find the cheapest Amazon with good ratings, probably made by Motorola.

There are many other phones that are excellent. Google makes some, OnePlus makes some, other Chinese brands that you are not familiar with also make some. However, none of that matters when it comes to the shopping partly because the average consumer will buy a phone from Samsung, Apple or Motorola.

It is a difficult field to play, and LG sees it. It seems that LG is also tired of trying to be a part of this, and I can’t blame the company at all. LG, as a phone manufacturer, cannot compete in today’s market unless it is content to lose money at an alarming level. Some companies are fine with the bleeding of money in the current mobile phone market for one reason or another. Google loves to spend money on its Pixel vanity project. Yes, I said that. Fight with me. OnePlus can lose money in a division and make up for losses elsewhere, offering exclusive accessories that every OnePlus phone buyer wants.

When you make the best television on the market, you make a lot of money selling it.

LG could follow this path because the money you earn on things like smart TVs or smart washing machines or smart sound bars can easily reinforce your smartphone division, but it makes more sense to discard that smartphone division and keep working on ThinQ products that work within the ecosystems that sell well, like the ones Google and Apple offer. A phone like the LG Wing may be a new idea, but the reality is that it is also an anchor. LG just doesn’t need that dead weight.

This and where we lose. LG, like all the companies that helped shape Android, made things better through their “stupid” ideas. 3D screens on phones, “gaming” phones with fast but battery-consuming chips, from NVIDIA and software to turn off the rest when you want to play CoD Mobile are LG’s ideas. And so do rotary phones that look like boomerangs or phones with roll-out screens that haven’t been made yet.

Some of Android’s best features started out as stupid ideas.

But that was the first Note; it was comically large and “nobody wants a stylus” was the synopsis of all the reviews when it debuted. Or a foldable phone: fragile, excessive and “stupidly” high priced. We need companies like LG and Samsung try stupid things because that’s how you find the one big idea that remains. You will never find it at Apple, which thinks that adding an old sensor to a card by the camera is innovative enough. Apple plays it safe; the Samsungs and LGs of the world do not.

When and how LG discards its phone division is still a rumored mess, where no one knows any absolute truth. But it will happen eventually, and we will all be worse off when it arrives.