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00:00Hey, what's up? MKBHD here. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself
00:08become the villain. It's such a good quote, mostly because it's true. And in this case,
00:14we just saw LG die a hero. That's all. So it's officially official. LG is shutting down
00:20their smartphone business. They will not be making any more smartphones. And when this
00:24news dropped a couple nights ago, I bet most people were in one of two camps. One, oh,
00:30bummer. That's too bad. Or two, oh, LG was still making smartphones? Which is wild because
00:36not only did LG make smartphones, but LG has made a lot of really influential phones that
00:42have had a direct impact on the phone you're probably holding right now. So this is big
00:46news. LG is a big company. Them leaving smartphones is pretty big news. But how did this happen?
00:52Well, we already know LG has been making phones for a long time. And it's tempting
00:55to think, if at least you're around my age, that their heyday was probably in like the
01:00mid 2000s with phones like the LG Voyager, LG Envy, LG Chocolate. Those were, I know
01:07a lot of people that had those phones. Those are very popular phones. My first ever smartphone
01:12was the LG Voyager. I'm considering this a smartphone. And I started this channel when
01:17I had that phone. And I even did a few videos about it. But yeah, lots of other people had
01:22various LG semi smartphones from around that time. And I mean, a lot of people, 21 million
01:28people bought the LG Chocolate. But it might surprise you to know that their most popular
01:33Android phone of all time was the G3. And that came out in 2014. So that was their peak
01:40for smartphone stuff. That phone sold 10 million units. And their second most popular Android
01:47phone of all time was the G2. And that sold around 3 million. So clearly, there was a
01:52decline. LG never found those sales again. They never had any single smartphone come
01:56out after that that competed on a massive scale in any price bracket. They didn't have
02:01a hit budget phone. They didn't really have anything that started doing numbers in the
02:06mid range. And they never really achieved much presence in the high end market either
02:11as far as market share. And all of this was despite having a lot of the same specs and
02:16materials and features on paper as the ones that did find success. But phone purchase
02:22decisions are not made on paper. And so my take is LG actually did make decent phones
02:29on paper, but they did not know how to sell those phones like at all. Like what's the
02:36most basic art in the world of marketing? Naming stuff, right? Just simple, memorable,
02:43understandable name. And I'm definitely not saying all the other manufacturers have gotten
02:47naming down because they haven't. But just having something simple, easy to understand
02:51is important. I know that iPhone 12 Pro does more than iPhone 12. I know that the 12 is
02:57newer than the 11. I'm not saying naming your phone LG V60, ThinQ 5G made it a worse phone.
03:04I'm just saying it didn't help. I don't know why LG was so insistent on those extra words
03:16like ThinQ. That doesn't mean anything to anyone here, but they kept adding it anyway.
03:22But okay, just forgetting naming, forget even what you might think of as software. LG's
03:28phones never really got great marketing treatment. They had pretty forgettable marketing to be
03:33perfectly honest. And as many have pointed out, found it kind of difficult to characterize
03:39LG phones, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's just forgettable. It honestly kind of
03:44feels like a, like a washer and a dryer. It's like their marketing of their smartphones
03:49was right along the same lines as the marketing of their other appliances.
03:57But the crazy thing is the actual character of LG phones over these years, it's really
04:05interesting and super low key influential. So over the past eight years or so, I'd say
04:12LG has been one of the few companies that actually tries very new things like super
04:18wild things, kind of anything really. But that's been their sort of motto is just throwing
04:23a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what'll stick. And sometimes it really did stick.
04:28Look at this list. In March, 2007, we had LG Prada. That was the first capacitive touch
04:34screen smartphone. Pretty much every smartphone today has a capacitive touch screen. In 2010,
04:39LG Optimus 2X came out. That was the first dual core processor smartphone ever. And the
04:44first to do 1080p video recording. Then the next year, LG Optimus 3D was the first phone
04:50with more than one rear camera. Think about that. When's the last time you saw a flagship
04:54with only one rear camera? They also had the first quad core phone, the LG Optimus 4X.
04:59Then it gets serious. In September, 2013, LG G2 is the first phone to have double tap
05:05to wake. At the time, they just called it the knock knock feature. That the first mass
05:09produced QHD display in a phone. That was the LG G3. Then the V10 would technically
05:14be the first dual screen phone, thanks to the second screen embedded up top. Maybe that's
05:19a stretch, but there are some dual screen phones out now. But then the LG G5 was the
05:24first phone with an ultra wide camera on the back. Then the G6 was the first with an 18
05:30by 9 display, having a little bit of that taller aspect ratio to keep it narrower and
05:34fit better in the hand. And then V40 was the first phone with all three focal lengths on
05:38the back cameras. One ultra wide, one standard, and one telephoto. So it would be pretty easy
05:43to miss if you weren't paying attention, but it turns out LG has been important as far
05:48as introducing new ideas that hooked and sort of got taken for granted today. I don't
05:55know if you can even buy that many smartphones at the high end that don't have an ultra wide
06:01and tap to wake and a high resolution display. These are all really good things that caught
06:05on that we see everywhere because they turned out to be good ideas. But there were also
06:11plenty of things that didn't catch on. Like that mini display on the top of the V10 and
06:16we don't really see that anymore. The self healing back on the back of the G Flex. Really
06:21cool idea. You don't really see that anymore either. They tried curved phones for a while
06:26too because they were supposed to be more natural to holding your hand and up against
06:30your face. That didn't last long. They also had that one modular phone that one year with
06:35the G5. It was super cool, but a year later they were done making modules for it and the
06:40whole ecosystem folded. And then the G8 is the most memorable recent one for me. So that
06:45had an IR sensor array for reading the veins in your hand. And these weird gestures that
06:53barely worked. When these things didn't catch on the next year, they were gone. They just
06:58dropped it. It was just gone from the next phone. And that makes sense, but it's also
07:03kind of unnerving as a customer. Like what we look for in a long-term commitment to a
07:09phone is stability and reliability and consistency. And at least being somewhat predictable that
07:15these things will be useful for a long time. And so it's not likely you want to buy into
07:20an ecosystem of modules if you don't even know it'll be around the next year, you know?
07:25And that's not even considering LG's pretty bad track record of actually delivering software
07:30updates to their phones, which just adds into the whole not very predictable stability thing.
07:36Now there's a lot of talk I've noticed about how maybe YouTubers are responsible for LG's
07:43downfall because we didn't give them enough credit. Let's talk about that. So I went back
07:49to check just because I was curious. It turns out I've done about 20 videos about LG smartphones
07:54over the past few years, 20 videos. And that's not including all of the nexuses I loved that
08:00LG also made. One of the earliest videos I ever had go somewhat viral on this channel
08:06was my video on the self-healing of the LG G Flex from back in 2013. And believe it or
08:12not, the most viewed single piece of content I have ever made happens to be me showing
08:18the LG wing to 32 million people on TikTok. So the problem isn't a lack of coverage. People
08:24talk about LG phones. The real question a lot of people are asking is, was this coverage
08:28fair? Because if you, if you watched these videos, you might still be wondering if LG
08:36got the credit they deserve. So my take is there's a big difference between sharing a
08:44product with the world and giving a credit for something new or some innovation or an
08:49idea we haven't seen before versus reviewing and actually recommending a product overall
08:58to buy for a purchase decision. Two very different things. And so what I've started to notice
09:03with that is I can speak for myself. Basically there's a big distinction between innovation
09:09and trying something new and being able to recommend something to a large variety of
09:13people and phones that do well in one bucket often don't do well in the other. It goes
09:20both ways. See Sony, for example, I'll leave that video link below. And so I think over
09:25the years, there's actually been a lot of giving LG credit for all of that, trying new
09:30things and being unique, especially with hardware, because they clearly did a lot of
09:34that throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick. Every time they showed something
09:38interesting and new, I was there to give it a shot and point a camera at it and share
09:42my findings with you all. The self-healing G flex was such a fun experiment. The modular
09:47G5 design was a favorite. It was impressively well thought out and the multiple cameras
09:52on the back of the V40 were fun right from the beginning. Even if the software features
09:57they built into that version to take advantage of them was a little wonky. So yes, absolutely
10:02checking the boxes in the innovation bucket and trying new things for sure. But then when
10:07it came to reviews and actually deciding, okay, now do we recommend this thing to a
10:12large group of people? LG phones as an overall package were always a little bit tough to
10:18recommend to those larger groups. Even recently V60, pretty great overall phone, but a 60
10:27Hertz display in a flagship when all the competition had moved on to higher refresh rate was tough.
10:32Or even LG wing was cool as hell, but 765G in a thousand dollar phone was kind of tough
10:41to recommend. And it just continues as you go back. LG G8 might be the most perfect example
10:48of an LG smartphone from the past few years possible. Like this was a really solid phone,
10:53right? High-end chip, pretty solid design, very modest of course, no camera bump, kept
11:00the headphone jack with the quad deck, kept expandable storage, decent battery and the
11:06killer feature, Vain ID. Yeah, that was the new thing they decided to throw out the wall.
11:12So the extra big notch in a phone of this year had a time of flight sensor, an infrared
11:18sensor and receiver to identify your hand and let you do gestures over the phone with
11:23your hand. And it really didn't work that well at all. You should have seen the room
11:28full of journalists and YouTubers and PR reps all with this brand new phone as we're trying
11:35to make our videos about it, everyone's trying to do the thing to get it to work. And no
11:40one can even, we're a room full of professionals, even trained professionals from LG are like,
11:45if you just get it just, it was brutal. So if you're going to share that phone, you're
11:49going to do one of two things. One is give it credit for actually trying something new
11:54and maybe it's a weird, unusual set of sensors we've never seen before, but highlighting
11:58the cool thing or reviewing it and like packaging it all overall to see if it's actually worth
12:04buying versus a competition for most people. And look, I called it in my review, the jack
12:10of all trades and master of none, which I thought was true, but also apparently it was
12:14pretty harsh. Apparently people thought I was being a little too hard on the phone.
12:18I didn't really think so. I was also far from the most negative take on the G8, but here's
12:23the thing. The point is when you take a step back, the most innovative, unique, unproven
12:30stuff that you do in your gadget is almost by definition useful to the smallest number
12:36of people. And this is true for every phone manufacturer. Now, normally this isn't a huge
12:40problem because if the smartphone company is making money somewhere, then yeah, they
12:46can designate one of their lines to be the unique, innovative, risk-taking one. Like
12:52Samsung is a perfect example of this. They have their money-making flagships, so those
12:56don't take big risks. So they crank out all kinds of risky, unproven, foldy ideas in other
13:03product lines just to kind of see what sticks. Xiaomi has their money-making phones. So the
13:09Mi Mix series is specifically consistently the one where they try out their wild designs.
13:14Vivo, if you've noticed, is basically Oppo Group's innovation brand. So with LG, and
13:19this is my own analysis, I don't, I haven't seen their books, but they didn't really have
13:24a steady, consistent moneymaker. They didn't have some other smartphone that was winning
13:30them lots of market share so they could afford to subsidize a risk-taking one. Their main
13:35line was the fun one. It was the risk-taking one. And so this was just a straight business
13:41decision. So you can read the official LG press release explaining why they left the
13:45smartphone market. And it has this statement, which is LG's strategic decision to exit the
13:49incredibly competitive mobile phone sector will enable the company to focus resources
13:53in growth areas like electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart homes, robotics,
13:59AI, and business-to-business solutions, as well as platforms and services. So basic translation,
14:04LG does a bunch of other stuff as a company, monitors, TVs, appliances, we already know.
14:11And so cutting off the smartphone division that was losing money is just a decision that
14:16allows them to focus on other things that might grow up more. So what happens now? Well,
14:22if you were thinking about buying an LG phone, don't. If you already have an LG phone, you
14:28can check the list. They've promised a small list of phones. We'll continue to get, I guess,
14:32one more update up to the Android 12 update. We'll see. Hopefully they can support phones
14:38as long as they can before they disappear. But there's definitely, there's a lot of talent
14:42and a lot of patents over there. What they decided to do with that infrastructure is
14:46anybody's guess. But I think the moral of the story of LG is innovation and trying new
14:53things and risk-taking is great, but it requires a balance of also some stability and long-term
15:02consistency. And LG just wasn't quite able to strike that balance. But the real bummer
15:07is losing LG is an L for all of us, just because that is, it's a competitor. That's one less
15:14set of cool ideas that's going to be tried out. Like who knows how many other ultra wide
15:20or multiple camera type ideas that they would have had that we won't get to see now. And
15:25that's one less competitor to incentivize the other bigger companies to really keep
15:30their stuff together and win over our business. So we've lost other smartphone companies before,
15:35but LG feels like the biggest one as of late. It feels like the biggest space, the biggest
15:40void being left in the market. Anyway, the point of this video isn't for me to like defend
15:44myself. Like I killed LG, but you know, the question of what happened to LG isn't just
15:51explained away by saying, Oh, the big YouTubers didn't give LG enough credit. The truth is
15:56always more nuanced than that. Even if you believe that to be true. And this truth is,
16:01this was a business decision that LG was probably thinking about for a long time. So
16:05you either die hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. And LG just
16:11died a hero. RIP LG smartphones. You'll be missed. Not because we were all using your
16:16phones, but because you did move the needle. That's been pretty much it. Shout out to Mr.
16:21Mobile. Who's also dropping a sort of a retrospective video, looking back at some of LG's finer
16:26moments. I saw he was working on it. I haven't seen the video yet, but I'm going to link
16:30it below when he does drop it, because I imagine it'll be pretty good. Either way, that's been
16:34it. Thanks for watching. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace.