LG Electronics has posted its financials for the third quarter of 2011 and the light at the end of the tunnel grows dimmer for the Korean phone maker as it hasn't managed to patch the hole in its handset division. The company is in the red for a sixth consecutive quarter, but what's really troubling is that handset losses were more than double than those from last trimester. LG posted some $124 million (140 billion won) loss, widening from 55 billion won in Q2 2011.
The company underwent a major shift in top executives as Kon Bon-joon took over in an attempt to save the company's mobile department. Recovery has been slow up until this quarter, and even more so after the results for Q3 2011.
The results are partly explained by the lack of a worthy competitor to Samsung's Galaxy S II and Apple's iPhone in the quarter.
Other departments at LG were doing better as the company shipped a record number of TVs as that business remains profitable.
LG, the world's third biggest phone maker, however still has an ace up its sleeve – it has announced the LG Optimus LTE in Korea and it boasts a 4.5” IPS 720p screen and a 1.5GHz dual-core processor by Qualcomm. This definitely puts it on par with the cream of the crop Androids. The only big phone maker that still hasn't reported results is Samsung. The other Korean giant is expected to give us its quarterly results on Friday and - chances are - it will surpass Apple as the biggest smartphone maker globally.
