LG Electronics more than triples sales target for mobile division to Rs 2500 cr

Mumbai,21 july-2014, Aditi Divekar : Noting the potential India’s smart phone market possess,LG Electronics has decided to tweak its strategy a bit and has more than tripled its sales target for its mobile division in the country to Rs 2,500 crore in 2014. The South Korean electronics company has also decided to increase the frequency of new product launches in India which it believes would help in enhancing its market share in the smartphone segment.

LG Electronics more than triples sales target for mobile division to Rs 2500 cr

“The most important part of our strategy (for India) is to bring in products which we can claim that it has the ultimate technology,” Soon Kwon, Managing Director of LG Electronics India told Business Standard.

“We also plan to have some speedy launches of products in this market. In the next six months, we will see another 8-10 mobiles getting launched for this market which will help us to double our market share (in the mobile phone segment) in India,” Kwon added.

The company whose sales target for India in 2013 stood at Rs 800 crore, currently has a market share of five per cent in the mobile space in India and it intends taking it to 10 percent by December-2014.

Since the beginning of 2014, the company has launched 15 mobiles in the Indian market at various price points. As part of its strategy, L&G Electronics on Monday launched its LG G3 smart phone priced in the range of Rs 47,990-50,990 crore which will be available in three colours.

“We are mainly in the premium customer category space and we intend to be in this space going ahead. There are no plans to have products which are sub-$100 or sub-$200 for India market,” Kwon said.

Speaking about innovation and promotion of its products in India which face stiff competition from players like Samsung and Micromax, Kwon said, LG Electronics plans to spend a total of Rs 700-800 crore only on research and development for overall India market and another Rs 800 crore on promotion of all its electronic gadgets.

Though Kwon did not throw much light on the investments made towards the LG G3 smart phone, he said the company has put in a lot of resources and money into this product which is expected to be a game changer for the company n the mobile space.

LG will be releasing 15,000 limited edition of G3 smart phones which has highlighting features like a 5.5-inch Quad HD display with 538 ppi (pixel per inch) with four times the resolution of HD and almost two times higher resolution than a full HD display. The variant of LG G3, the LG G3 Beat is also expected to launched in the current quarter. However, the price point for the same is yet to be decided, said Kwon.

The company said though its product G3 will be available across India, it has no plans to get itself on the e-commerce platform for better reach. “We are available pan-India, and will make use of our outlets to cater to the customers. We are hopeful that by end of 2014, we will see good demand for all our LG products in the India market,” he added.

LG Electronics’ products include televisions, home theater systems, refrigerators, washing machines, computer monitors, and smartphones among others.