LG Mobile reports poor Q3 results, LGE still holding strong

The third quarter of the financial year wasn't particularly successful for the second largest Korean conglomerate. The profit they recorded stands at just over the measly 7 million US dollars, which is a 99-percent decrease as compared to the 810 million they scored in the same quarter last year. Still any profit is better than loss so it's not all bad.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Mobile division which lost some 270 million dollars, which makes it the worst performer of all LG businesses. Over the past three months shipments were down by 7% QoQ to a total of 28.4 million units and revenue fell to 2.64 billion dollars, which is nearly 12 percent down from Q2 2010.

The results look even worse when compared to Q3 of 2009 with the revenue slipping by 31.9 percent. LG quotes the weak demand in Europe and the continuous increase in smartphone demand (where they cannot compete quite well recently) as the reasons for their recent troubles. The reduction of the average selling price of their devices, due to poor performance in developed markets and investments in R&D (let's hope that pays off) are also mentioned.

The LG mobile division still expects to achieve "high single digit growth" in Q4, staking a lot on the Optimus One and Optimus 7 baskets. New entry level touch-driven phones are also expected.

However LG expect mobile phone shipments to increase by 13 percent in the holiday quarter of this year so they obviously expect to lose some further market share. Their place as the world's third largest manufacturer is safe for now though.