LG to exit feature phone business

Buoyed by phenomenal growth in the smartphone segment and facing stiff competition from domestic players in the low cost feature phone segment, South Korean electronics giant LG has decided to exit the feature phone market.
At the launch of LG's latest smartphone Optimus One, Moon B Shin, managing director, LG India, said, "Smartphones are poised to drive growth in the Indian mobile market in the coming years and LG will focus only on the smartphone segment in the short term. In future we will re-enter the feature phone business with better products at the right time."
LG also announced that it intends to capture 15 to 20 per cent of market share in the smartphone category in India, and to achieve the target it will launch 12 new phones in the next six months. It will also spend Rs 350 crore on marketing.
The company is also increasing the production capacity of its plant in Pune to produce 1.5 crore phones annually. It is also expanding its retail network by 25,000 outlets.
With respect to the operating system (OS), LG announced that it will focus mainly on Android; however, 2 of 12 products in the offing will run Windows phone 7 OS.
In line with its new strategy, LG today launched LG Optimus One, which is an Android 2.2 Froyo based phone with a 3.1 inch capacitive touch screen, 3 mega pixel camera, WiFi, A-GPS etc. Apart from regular Android phone features, LG has included 40 bundled apps and an application that recognises voice commands.
LG also said it will launch several devices in the coming months, including a tablet PC called LG Optimus 7 running Windows Phone 7 OS. The company will also launch other Optimus series devices.
Optimus One is priced at a market operating price of Rs 13,500. Optimus Seven is expected to be priced at a little more than Rs 25,000.