14 DAY TRIAL // Korean mobile phone maker LG Electronics announced today its financial results for the first quarter of the ongoing year, and posted higher-than-expected revenues for the time frame. The Mobile Communications Company reported $3.02 billion in sales (KRW 4.25 trillion), which marks a 16.8 percent growth compared to the same quarter last year.
In addition, the phone maker also announced that its operating profit was of $181 million, and that it registered a margin of 6.0 percent. The handset sales were of $2.78 billion, registering a 22.6 percent growth year over year, while the operating profit was of $187 million with a margin of 6.7 percent.
The company registered strong sales for its mid-tier models, like the Cookie, a full-touchscreen phone, or the LG-KS360, a QWERTY keypad messaging phone, among other devices. On a yearly basis, the handset shipments were 7 percent lower, while also registering a 12 percent drop compared to the previous quarter, reaching 22.6 million units, affected both by the market contraction and the seasonal effect.
The Korean company expects the market to decline further, as the global economical turmoil will continue, and it forecasts that the global market will contract 10 percent on a yearly basis, toping 260 million units in the second quarter.
At the same time, LG also stated that it plans to register a 10 percent growth in the second quarter of 2009, compared to the first quarter, and that it will focus on high-tier, feature-rich devices like the Arena, which sports the company's new S-Class UI, or messaging phones such as Xenon and Neon, as well as Viewty Smart, an 8-megapixel camera phone, or the GD900, which sports a transparent keypad.
As many of you already know, LG is not focused only on the development of mobile phones, and it announced that the entire Q1 had been a good one, as its sales on a global basis went up 14.6 percent, reaching $9.12 billion on a yearly basis, while also registering $324 million operating profit, and a margin of 3.5 percent, 2.8 percentage points higher than the previous quarter.