LG’s exit of the smartphone market could leave customers in the lurch

LG is rumored to be planning an exit of the smartphone market. While the company did acknowledge they were exploring a potential sale of their smartphone business, it seems that companies just aren’t biting, which has since resulted in new reports suggesting that LG could just shut down their smartphone business and exit instead of finding a buyer.

While it is a pity that this is what things have come to, there could be some bad news for current LG customers. According to a series of tweets from industry insider Tron, it seems that LG’s decision to exit the market could also mean that the company will discontinue all software updates for its existing phones.

… the software updates, it is unlikely to be done in this situation.

It is in many ways unfortunate that the LG phone, which started with the feature phone, ends with the Wing.

Final official statement from LG is expected to be announce next Monday, Korea time. (3/3)

— Tron ❂ (@FrontTron) March 29, 2021

Android already has kind of a poor reputation when it comes to software updates due to the fact that there are so many manufacturers, each with their own release schedule and plans, that LG abandoning its existing users will certainly not go down well with the public. As PhoneArena points out, LG will most likely say that they are committed to software updates and support of existing devices, but they think it will probably just be lip service.

They note that LG is already one of the slowest companies when it comes to updates, and if they were to exit the market, there would be no incentive for them to speed up the process. Hopefully this isn’t true, but it seems that we might have to wait until next Monday where the company is expected to make some kind of official statement.

Source: PhoneArena