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00:00Okay, so today is a bit of a sad day actually. LG have confirmed they're
00:05closing their mobile division. A strategic move they say in the face of
00:09stiff competition and presumably not wanting to lose any more than the four
00:14and a half billion dollars or so of losses they've incurred over the last
00:18six years. Fair enough. They're losing money, the competition's getting stronger
00:22and they just can't keep up. It was a similar story with BlackBerry and HTC and
00:26Nokia although they're back now actually and I'm sure they won't be the
00:30last. I mean Sony's Xperia division hasn't really been doing that well for a
00:34few years but it is a real shame. LG made some of the very best phones ever going
00:39all the way back to the LG G2 and the G3 with their big screens and thin bezels.
00:44The G3 by the way is a personal favorite as it was my first ever review on this
00:49channel so that phone will always be special to me and I still keep one
00:53around just to see how far I've come and also phones and technology and the
00:57best bit, look at this, replaceable batteries. It was a simpler time. Now I've
01:02been doing this for about six years now since the beginning of 2015 and every
01:07single year in February I would go to MWC, the Mobile World Congress in
01:12Barcelona, one of the best trade shows of the year by the way and the big two
01:17companies to look for were Samsung and LG. The constant back and forth between
01:22the Galaxy S6 or the LG G5 and even back then they were taking risks, trying
01:27something a bit different. As Google were experimenting with Project Ara, a fully
01:31modular phone, the G5 launched with a handful of modules you could switch out.
01:35B&O place speakers, the cam plus with a shutter button, an extra battery and even
01:40a 360 cam. It didn't really catch on and I think the biggest problem was the lack
01:45of third-party support because beyond the handful of LG's own official
01:49attachments there wasn't really anything else. But they were trying
01:52something different and in a world of copy and paste rectangular slabs of
01:56glass, even gimmicky features to some extent are good and it pushes the
02:00industry forward. Even until a few months ago the LG Wing was one of the most
02:04exciting phones of 2020 with the second screen that twists around to give you a
02:08full T-pose smartphone. It was really cool and there were some nifty use cases
02:12for it but again it just didn't sell very well. Then we had the dual screen
02:17cases for phones like the V60 ThinQ as well as the G8X and the snazzy looking
02:22LG Velvet and this genuinely made these otherwise good but not exceptional
02:27phones stand out and maybe was even a precursor to the Microsoft Surface Duo.
02:31And even this year we were finally expecting to see the launch of LG's
02:35first rollable phone which sadly is now unlikely to ever see the light of day. So
02:41we've had some really good phones, some proper unique innovation and a pretty
02:44loyal fan base. So where did it all go wrong? Well I think there were three big
02:49reasons. Firstly the camera. The cameras on LG phones were always good but just
02:54not quite good enough and never quite kept up with the latest from Samsung or
02:59Apple. Secondly they kept struggling to get third-party support even going back
03:03to the modular G5 but even recently with apps for the dual screen cases or the LG
03:08Wing. Beyond LG's own applications there wasn't really much else coming. And
03:12finally the biggest reason really they were just too expensive so they fell
03:16behind. I think if LG had gone with more of a one-plus strategy of knowing their
03:21flagships are never quite as good as a competition but giving us a good high-end
03:25phone for a more affordable price that would have been key. And crucially the
03:29value of LG phones dropped like a stone a month or two after launch. You could
03:33probably get the latest LG for like a third off if you waited a few weeks but
03:38if they launched at that price and undercut Samsung, Huawei and Apple and
03:42maybe competed more with OnePlus that could have made all the difference. Now
03:46LG have said that phones will continue to be on sale and if you do own an LG
03:51phone they will support it although they haven't said for how long and I can't
03:54imagine it would be much more than 6 or 12 months or so. The flip side of that I
03:58suppose is that if you do fancy yourself a cool new LG Wing or a V60 you might
04:03better get one on a good deal since I suspect some people wouldn't really want
04:07to buy a new LG phone without that future support but it's not like LG's
04:11just completely gone out of business so you will still get some support for your
04:14phone but yeah it's the end of any new devices. So LG mobile may be closing but
04:19LG itself is not going anywhere with their fantastic OLED TVs, their gram
04:24laptops, gaming and professional monitors and they're also one of the biggest
04:28players in home tech from fridges to washing machines. So fingers crossed that
04:33some of the employees working in the mobile division can be transferred
04:36internally because while we can be sad about not seeing any phones people
04:40actually losing their jobs is a really sad thing. But as with any good movie
04:44franchise dead is never really dead and as we've seen with Nokia a bit of
04:49reinvestment from HMD Global they've come back fighting and actually Nokia
04:52produced some really fantastic affordable budget phones and also
04:56basically own the feature phone market right now so maybe one day we will see
05:00another LG phone but not anytime soon unfortunately. So it is sad I've got a
05:07lot of memories tied up with LG I know it's just phones and technology but this
05:10is my life and I know a lot of people when you buy the phone or the product
05:14and you have that with you for two or three years you form a bit of a bond
05:18with it so it is a sad day and I really do hope not many people are gonna lose
05:21their jobs at the LG mobile division but what I would love to hear are your LG
05:26stories, the phones that you've owned, what you've thought of them and your
05:29experiences and also how LG mobile could have done things differently to
05:33stay in business. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Thank you
05:36so much for watching guys and if you do want to see more from me then give me a
05:39thumbs up and hit that subscribe button and I'll see you next time right here on
05:42the Tech Chap. Hi everyone I'm Tom I'm the Tech Chap. I like to test, analyze and
05:47review the latest smartphones, tablets and consumer tech. This is my first
05:51video so please be nice. We're gonna be talking about the LG G3.