LG Kisses G Pro Line Goodbye, G4 To Be Sole Flagship Device Next Year

LG Kisses G Pro Line Goodbye, G4 To Be Sole Flagship Device Next Year

The LG G Pro line might not have been immensely successful in terms of sales compared to Samsung’s Galaxy Note line of phablets, but they did provide a good alternative to people who weren’t happy with Samsung’s approach. The original LG G Pro as well as the G Pro 2 launched this year, are both very capable phablets and provide a well-rounded package overall for a significantly lower price than Samsung’s Galaxy Note range. However, LG’s new smartphone business chief, Juno Cho believes that the company would be better off concentrating on the G4 alone and not spend any resources on the G Pro line. As a result, the LG G Pro product line has allegedly been axed and we aren’t likely to see any LG G Pro model in the near future.

The information comes courtesy of industry sources in South Korea. They claim that LG doesn’t want to confuse buyers in the high-end segment and will focus solely on the LG G4 and position the G series as its only flagship smartphone line. The LG F and L series smartphones are here to stay though, as they make up for around 50% of LG’s total Android smartphone sales and are expected to continue driving LG’s sales growth in the smartphones market going forward.

One of the primary reasons behind the decision is said to be the fact that there doesn’t remain much scope for LG to differentiate between the G Pro line and the G line as the G3 already has a 5.5” display size which puts it in phablet category. With such a small difference in size, there is very little LG can do to differentiate the two products and justify the extra R&D expenditure on the G Pro when there isn’t going to be much of a difference between the two. This problem isn’t unique to LG though, in fact most manufacturers will need to re-think their phablet strategy in the near future as flagship devices breach the 5.5-inch display size mark next year. Until now there was a clear difference between flagship smartphones and phablets as flagship smartphones were restricted to a screen size of between 5 and 5.2-inches.

The low sales of the G Pro line is also to be blamed though. Both the G Pro and the G Pro 2 haven’t been very popular devices. The general lack of interest in the G Pro devices from carriers doesn’t help either. One of the major markets where LG seems to be making a good progress with sales is the US market. Since majority of smartphone sales in the US is made via carriers, the G Pro devices haven’t been able to contribute to LG’s total sales there.