It's that joyous time of the year when we're bombarded with long, boring press releases with lots of numbers on that tell how terrible a company is doing — that's right, second-quarter 2019 financial results are in. In news that will shock absolutely nobody, LG and Sony continue to struggle when it comes to sales of smartphones.
Despite posting record second-quarter and first-half revenues and operating profit totaling $559.4 million — largely due to strong home appliance sales — LG's Mobile Communications division continues to underperform. Sales of $1.38 billion equate to a 21.3% drop compared with the same period last year, although it is an increase of 6.8% over the previous quarter. The company blames the usual factors for these results: stagnant demand across the whole sector and "continued aggressive pricing by Chinese brands." Further improvement is expected in Q3 with new products coming to market and greater demand for 5G products, apparently.
It's a similar story over at Sony, whose sales in the Electronics Products & Solutions division that smartphones are now a part of reached $776 million, marking a 15% decrease year-on-year. The Japanese company attributes the poor performance to a drop shipments of not just smartphones, but also televisions and digital cameras, two areas that Sony usually does better in. The negative impact of foreign exchange rate also contributed to a decrease in operating income, but the Mobile Communications department is at least cutting costs in an attempt to balance the books.
None of this information is in any way surprising, but even though these two companies are symbolic of once-desirable smartphone makers who now fail to capture the imagination of consumers, it's fair to say the whole industry is feeling the squeeze right now.