LG's Optimus G Will Hit LTE Markets In 50 New Countries Starting In Late January
LG's Optimus G might not have gotten the same attention as the Nexus 4, but it's the cream of LG's 2012 crop. And to that end, the company has just announced that it will roll out the Optimus G smartphone globally …
Context & Ripple Effects
LG launched the Optimus G flagship in September 2012 with a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro, 2GB RAM and LTE, but the phone was quickly eclipsed by Google's Nexus 4 — which Onliner's October leak confirmed was itself a remodeled Optimus G (LG-E960). The result was an odd dynamic: LG built the hardware everyone wanted, yet the Nexus branding captured the attention.
This rollout matters against that backdrop because LG's competitive position has been eroding where it counts: as of late 2012, LG, Motorola and HTC were all confirmed to be losing US market share to Samsung and Apple. Pushing its best 2012 device into 50 new LTE markets from late January is LG's attempt to convert engineering credibility into global volume before its next flagship cycle.
First-order effects
- Carriers across the 50 new LTE markets gain access to LG's top-tier Android handset mid-cycle, letting LG monetize 2012-era silicon into early 2013 rather than writing off the product after a single region.
- The rollout puts the Optimus G head-to-head with Samsung and Apple flagships in dozens of markets at once — precisely the two vendors confirmed in November 2012 to be pulling away from LG in the US.
Second-order effects
- Global volume on a shared platform improves LG's negotiating position with component suppliers and carriers, lowering per-unit costs just as the company needs margin room to compete against Samsung's scale.
Third-order effects
- If LG keeps iterating on the Optimus G lineage as its flagship platform rather than launching disconnected devices, it moves toward the Samsung-style model of annual global flagship refreshes — a structure where brand recognition compounds market-share gains or losses across every carrier relationship.
The trend: Second-tier Android manufacturers are responding to the Samsung-Apple squeeze by pushing a single flagship design across as many LTE carrier markets as possible, betting global scale can offset brand disadvantage.