14 DAY TRIAL // South Korean mobile phone maker LG Electronics announced on Wednesday its financial results for the second quarter of the ongoing year and posted record-high earnings in sales and operating profit. Compared to last year's second quarter, the company says, its global sales (including its overseas subsidiaries) went up by 13.8 percent, while the Mobile Communications unit's sales registered a growth of 25.8 percent year on year.
During the three-month period ended June 30, LG's Mobile Communications business registered sales of USD 3.981 billion (or KRW 5.140 trillion), and announced that the operating profit was of USD 422 million (KRW 545 billion), while the margin was of 10.6 percent. The company managed to sell around 29.9 percent more handsets compared to the same time frame a year ago, which translate into USD 3.778 billion in sales, (KRW 4.877 trillion), while the operating profit reached USD 417 million (KRW 538 billion), with a margin of 11.0 percent.
LG also announced that it had managed to ship a number of 29.82 million mobile phone units due to the strong demand that mid-level handsets had registered, and that the shipment levels were 7.8 percent higher compared to the same period a year ago, and 32 percent higher than in the previous quarter of the ongoing year. Some of the handsets that saw the highest levels of demand were the full touchscreen Cookie, LG-KS360, a QWERTY messaging device, the feature-rich Arena (with the new S-Class UI from LG), as well as the enV3 and enV Touch, both with QWERTY keyboards and a touchscreen for the latter.
According to the mobile phone maker, the global economic downturn will continue, and the global market is expected to see a 6 percent decline in the third quarter of the ongoing year compared to the same period a year ago, reaching a number of 280 million units worldwide. Even so, the company says that it should register a steady growth due to the launch of new high-end devices, including the new LG Black Label Series model, the GM730 smartphone and the GD900 Crystal, which features a transparent keypad.