LG's new phone aims to beat Apple, Samsung

SEOUL: LG Electronics Inc's new Optimus phone sports a display sharper than the one on Apple Inc's iPhone and its chip puts it on par with Samsung Electronics Co's newest Galaxy. Gwon Soo Seok, 23, still isn't won over.

"LG's image is that of a laggard," said Gwon, a student in Seoul who is leaning toward an iPhone or a Galaxy. "LG seems to have good technology, but Apple and Samsung are the cool ones," said Gwon, who stopped using devices made by Seoul-based LG, the world's No. 3 phonemaker, three years ago.

The failure to woo consumers like Gwon leaves LG at a disadvantage to Apple and Samsung in smartphones, the fastest- growing segment of the $207 billion mobile-phone industry. LG had 718 billion won ($625 million) in operating losses at the handset division in the year to June, compared with a 5.7 trillion-won profit in the same period at Samsung.

"LG was slow to embrace the smartphone market, and they are still having a hard time correcting the mistake," said Lim Han Eui, a telecommunications consultant at ROA Consulting in Seoul. "There has been nothing particularly special about their phones. They need to develop their own color and identity."

LG, whose panel unit supplies the "Retina" displays used in the iPhone, introduced its first smartphone globally last year, more than three years after the debut of the Apple device.

Apple, based in Cupertino, California, accounted for 18.5 per cent of global smartphone shipments in the second quarter, compared with 13.5 percent a year earlier, research company Strategy Analytics said in July. Nokia Oyj, based in Espoo, Finland, dropped to third place, falling behind Samsung after its market share shrank to 15.2 per cent from 38.1 per cent.

'Behind the Curve'
Including basic phones, Nokia remained the world's biggest handset maker with a 24.5 per cent share, followed by Samsung at 20.5 per cent and LG at 6.9 per cent, according to the researcher.

"They've been behind the curve and are constantly playing catch-up," Annalisa Di Chiara, a Hong Kong-based senior analyst at Moody's, said of LG. "The question, really, is whether they will ever catch up on the mobile side."

LG shares have slumped 36 per cent this year, compared with a 3.4 per cent drop for Samsung, a 22 per cent jump for Apple and a 39 per cent tumble for Nokia.

Earlier this month, Moody's cut the outlook for LG's Baa2 issuer and senior unsecured debt rating to "negative" from "stable," citing weakness in the handset market. Standard & Poor's lowered the long-term corporate credit and senior unsecured debt ratings to BBB- from BBB on October 14.

Hard sell
The company is aiming to stem losses and convince investors a turnaround is possible. Koo Bon Joon, the younger brother of LG Group's chairman, took over last year after his predecessor Nam Yong quit, taking responsibility for failing to come up with a model to counter the iPhone.

The maker of Chocolate and Prada handsets is cutting back on less-profitable models, Park Jong Seok, head of the mobile business, said in July. More than 12 new models have been unveiled this year, under the Optimus brand.

LG showcased the Optimus LTE in Seoul on October 10, touting its 329 pixels-per-inch screen compared with the iPhone 4S's 326. The chip has a 1.5 gigahertz processor, the same as Samsung's latest Galaxy model.

LG has the strength in technology for next-generation mobile devices such as the long-term evolution model, said Ken Hong, a Seoul-based spokesman. The latest phone is capable of running on faster networks using the so-called LTE technology.

'Ripe time'
"Time is ripe for us to put that into action," he said. "The Year 2012 is going to be a significantly different scene from now."

The company is also betting on 3D technology in mobile phones, a feature Samsung and Apple don't offer. It introduced a 3D phone this year and plans are in place for more, said Jeong Ok Hyun, head of LG's research center.

Full-year net loss at the mobile-phone division may narrow to 270 billion won in 2011 compared with the 654 billion won loss a year earlier, according to the average of four analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg News. LG is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings this week.

"LG's strategy seems to be to make anything they can come up with, with the hope that something will become a hit," said Woo Chang Hee, a Seoul-based analyst at LIG Investment & Securities Co. "They may be taking the right steps, but the pace isn't fast enough."

Until that happens, student Gwon says he will stay away.

"I want to see more people around me using LG phones first before I buy," he said.

0 comments

'Steve Jobs' book: A review

"Steve Jobs" (Simon & Schuster), by Walter Isaacson: "Steve Jobs" takes off the rose colored glasses, which often follows the premature death of an icon and instead offers something far more valuable: the chronicle of a complex genius, brash, which is crazy enough to think that could change the world - and did.

Through unprecedented access to jobs with more than 40 talks, including long sessions sitting in the living room co-founder of Apple, walk around your neighborhood, children and visits to the secret headquarters of his company, Isaacson takes the reader on a journey that few have had the opportunity to experience.

The book is the first, and with his death, October 5 to 56 years, the only authorized biography of the famous work privately and, by extension, the same secret of Apple Inc. Through Apple, Jobs helped usher in the era of personal computers he put the Macintosh in the hands of ordinary people. He changed the course of music, computer animation and mobile phone industries, and touched many others with the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad, Pixar and iTunes.

His biography, therefore, serves as a chronicle of Silicon Valley in the last 20 - and technology in the early 21, and American innovation at its best. For the generation that has grown into a world where computers are the norm, smartphones members feel like fifth and music comes from the Internet instead of record and CD stores, "Steve Jobs" should read the story.

Isaacson, whose other books include biographies of Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin and Henry Kissinger, uses anecdotes from friends, family, colleagues and adversaries to illustrate the sometimes profound contradictions in employment.

Given up for adoption at birth, youth employment was to deny his daughter Lisa for years. The product of the 1960s counterculture that rejected materialism, he left to found what became the world's most valuable company. Deeply influenced by the principles of Zen Buddhism, Labour rarely achieved inner peace and it was prone to wild mood swings and the average of outbreaks in people who were not up to expectations.

But these contradictions that make this magical world outside of Apple to a human error. And is his uncanny ability to fuse art and technology, design and engineering, beauty and function that allowed him to put the Macintosh, iPod, iPhone and the iPad into the hands of millions of people who did not even know they wanted. Jobs changed our relationship with technology, because humanity understood and who understood the chips and interfaces.

"I'm one of the few people who knows how to produce technology requires intuition and creativity, and how to produce something artistic requires real discipline," says Isaacson Jobs in one of the extended passages in the book that is in your own words.

These excerpts from the interview and pepper book as rare gems. In them, Job offers eloquent, unapologetic explanations for why did things the way they did and what was going on in your mind in the midst of Apple's decision and his own life.

Apple fanboys, geeks and encyclopedic-minded reporters comb the book probably unknown details about Jobs and Apple. I was informed it only a little more than the average reader, and a tenuous connection, nostalgic to him through having attended high school with his daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. I found myself combing, not the book of the secrets of Apple, but the secrets of Steve Jobs, the man, the father, the son.

With little patience for the technical details, I was browsing some of the passages of the book detailing the creation of the Apple I computer, Macintosh and the i-gadgets of years after Jobs. It is in these passages, however, where the reader can find explanations of why the iPhone's battery is not replaceable, why Macs cost more than PCs, and why the iPod headphones are white.

The chapters close, where he shines Jobs staff, with all its faults and folly, leaving a deep impression. There's humor, too, especially at first when Isaacson chronic lack of personal hygiene Jobs, the barefoot hippie who runs a corporation. And deeply moving passages about Jobs's resignation as CEO of Apple, and an afternoon spent with Isaacson listening to music and reminiscing.

"Steve Jobs" was originally scheduled to hit stores in 2012. Date of publication was moved after death Jobs. Therefore, there are bits that could have benefited from a new round of editing. There are anecdotes, for example, Isaacson repeats, as if his introduction to the first reader.

0 comments