LG announces CEO Jo Seong-jin will be replaced by Brian Kwon Dec. 1, amid 2020 leadership shakeup and LG smartphone division's 18th straight quarterly loss
CEO Jo Seong-jin, dubbed a “washing machine genius”, was appointed in December 2016, and is respected in South Korea for his unlikely journey …
Context & Ripple Effects
LG's leadership arc runs through its appliance business: Jo Seong-jin, the home-appliances chief promoted to CEO in December 2016, earned his reputation fixing the profitable side of the company while phones bled. A year ago LG already signaled where this was headed by moving Brian Kwon from home entertainment into the struggling smartphone division while he kept the profitable unit.
Now Kwon takes the top job outright, effective Dec. 1, with the phone division at 18 consecutive quarterly losses — and the corpus shows where that trajectory ended: LG eventually terminated the smartphone business altogether.
First-order effects
- Jo Seong-jin exits the CEO role he held for three years, and Brian Kwon now runs both the group's most profitable division (home entertainment) and its biggest loss-maker (phones) from the top seat.
- LG's 2020 reorganization puts an executive with direct ownership of the smartphone turnaround formally accountable for its 18th straight quarterly loss.
Second-order effects
- Kwon's dual command of home entertainment and handsets makes consolidation of LG's consumer electronics lines more likely, since one executive now controls the P&L of both.
- Rival Samsung, which made its own mobile-leadership change when Koh Dong Jin took over mobile communications amid dwindling sales in 2015, faces a Korean rival whose phone strategy is increasingly decided at group level rather than inside the division.
Third-order effects
- If persistent handset losses keep forcing leadership reshuffles, the endgame is structural retreat from phones — which is what the record shows LG ultimately chose — leaving Korean mobile competition concentrated around Samsung.
- The succession also cements a pattern at LG of promoting executives proven in appliances and entertainment, tying the conglomerate's identity to home hardware rather than mobile devices.
The trend: Loss-making handset divisions are being subordinated to profitable hardware businesses, with LG's leadership churn foreshadowing the full exit from smartphones.