The troubled smartphone maker LG is apparently back from the dead and reporting a a record quarter for mobile phone sales.
LG said that it sold 14.5 million handsets over the last quarter, its highest total ever and 20 percent more than last year. More than a third of those were LTE models.
Most of the success was due to the well-reviewed top-of-the-line G3 handset, along with strong sales of its mid-range L products.
LG’s mobile division earned $3.5 billion and put an end to a hat trick of three straight quarters of losses. Home entertainment also performed well, climbing 3 percent on the strength of higher-margin UltraHD 4K sets. All that resulted in an operating profit of $599 million.
Analysts think that LG is taking advantage of a slump in the fortunes of Apple and Samsung to claw its way back into favour. For a while there it did look like LG was about to go the way of Blackberry as a mobile phone company whose days were limited.
While the company is not generating the sorts of numbers that Samsung and Apple can, its sales figures are going up and not down.
