While we believed LG’s smartphone efforts were caught in a massive rut, the Korean hardware giant has proven us wrong. According to a Strategy Analytics report, shared via The Korea Herald, LG has managed to conquer 20 percent of the U.S smartphone market in the first quarter of 2017. This is a record-breaking achievement for the company as it has never attained the said figure — never ever in its lifetime in the United States.
The report further mentions that LG shipped a staggering 7.3 million smartphones in the first quarter of 2017 to attain the third spot in the market. The first and second positions in the U.S smartphone market have been held by the usual suspects, namely Apple and Samsung respectively. LG’s share grew by almost three percent year-on-year during the said quarter when compared to the same one from last year.
This increase in market share in the United States has been attributed to a broad range of factors, ranging from well-performing low budget phones to premium smartphones like the V20. LG has been selling its X and K series smartphones, with decent specs, like hot cakes in the western half as well as India.
Most buyers were also attracted to the dual-screen and dual-camera setup of the V20, which helped LG gain some momentum in the market this year. This can also be due to the lack of an exciting Android flagship in the market at that time. Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 had blown up across the globe and recalled, so people may have fallen back to LG as a secondary option. This has helped most OEMs gain some market, be it the fledgling Chinese vendors.
The statistics do not count LG G6 sales figures because it debuted in April this year — it will contribute to the overall count in the next quarter. But, it is highly doubtful that the Full Vision display of the G6 will attract more buyers than the Infinity display of the Galaxy S8 lineup. The latter has already made pre-order records and is selling impressively fast than the S7, while we haven’t much chatter on LG G6 sales as of now. An LG official has said,
It’s been one month since the new model hit the US market, and so far we are hearing positive reactions. Durability and safety will be the focus of US marketing for the G6 smartphone.
Still leading the race, Apple and Samsung accounted for 34.5 percent and 24.6 percent of the market share respectively. While the iPhone’s growth is stagnating at the moment, the Cupertino giant still managed to bag the top spot with an uptick of 2.3 percentage points.
While one Korean giant gained 3 percent, its counterpart lost almost 3 percentage points in Q1 2017. It was basically due to the very unfortunate Galaxy Note 7 fiasco — as I’ve already mentioned above. The Galaxy S7 and S7 Plus replacements might have helped save the company from a steeper decline in their U.S market share. The new Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus flagships are expected to bring back a massive amount of market share back for the Korean giant.
While the overall smartphone shipments in the United States declined by almost 4 percent annually. It is said to be an estimated 36.5 million units in the previous year. But, we have witnessed a rising star in the form of ZTE, which has managed to bag the fourth place with a definite 6.7 percent market share. The next two-quarters will see a huge a shake-up in rankings and shipments, due to internal policy changes and flagships released by each smartphone giant.
