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LG Pins Hopes on New Premium Smartphone

A model shows LG's new premium smartphone, the V10, at a launch in Seoul on Thursday.

LG on Thursday unveiled the V10, the first in a new lineup of premium smartphones the company hopes will drag it out of the second league in the market.

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The V10 will go on sale in Korea next Thursday and worldwide later.

Cho Joon-ho, head of LG's IT business division, has referred to the V series as being a "notch above" the current G series.

If the main selling point of LG's previous smartphones was their user-friendliness, the V series boasts more specialized functions, according to the company.

LG's smartphone business is barely breaking even at present and the electronics giant has placed all of its bets on the V10 to pull the company through tough times.

The V10 comes with 5 megapixel dual front-side cameras and a 5.7-inch dual-display. A secondary screen shows alarms and notices without obstructing the main display and can also be used to display the user's favorite apps.

LG desperately needs the V10 to do well. The company's smartphone division saw operating profit drop from W86.7 billion in the second quarter of 2014 to just W200 million in the same quarter this year (US$1=W1,177).

The poor performance stemmed from weak sales of the premium G4 smartphone, which hit stores in the first half of this year.

Samsung and Apple, the world's top two smartphone manufacturers, dominate the global market for premium smartphones, while Chinese players are increasing their shares of the market for cheaper ones. According to Strategy Analytics, LG accounted for a 5.2-percent share of the global smartphone market in 2013, but that fell to 4.9 percent in 2014 and to 4.2 percent this year.

Over the same period, LG's global rank fell from third to sixth as it was overtaken by Huawei, Xiaomi and Lenovo.

LG has priced the V10 at W799,700, which is around W100,000 cheaper than other premium smartphones.

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