LG jacks up smartphone sales target to 6 mil.

LG Electronics is aiming to sell 6 million smartphones this year, a senior executive exclusively said Tuesday, asking not to be indentified.

The detailed sales target came at a time when LG was in "critical phase" to boost its smartphone presence.

Even if it meets this target, it would account for only 30 percent of Samsung Electronics' sales.

Some industry experts believe that the LG goal is ambitious, considering its late start. LG has all but been excluded from the Apple-Samsung smartphone competition, which dragged down its outlook.

LG has decided to reduce its bloated mobile phone lineup by half to around 70 from last year's 145.

It plans to release 20 sets of smartphones this year with 15 models being Android phones.

He said that 4.2 million phones will be Android-based, while 1.8 million will use Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system, the executive said.

"We can't exactly predict the market. But one thing clear is LG is heavily betting on Google’s Android operating system. The number of Android phones will be more than earlier expected," an LG spokesman said.

A market research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) said the global smartphone market rose 50 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of this year with much of that growth resulting from handset makers adopting the Android system.

LG hopes that this boosted sale of smartphones will help turn it around.

The company suffered from some 119.6 billion won in operating losses in its handset business during the April-June period, being weighed down by the heavy portion of its unprofitable and conventional feature phones that had sapped margins.

"LG has been in talks with several major carriers in the United States and those in Europe to boost the shipments of the Optimus series," the executive said.

LG officials said its "Optimus One with Google" will be released via 120 mobile carriers worldwide.

As of the end of the second quarter, Samsung’s global smartphone share was 4.8 percent, according to IDC. But LG’s presence was negligible.

With its lineup readjustment, LG expects to lower the overall sales target of mobile phones.

During the first six months of this year, LG sold 57.7 million mostly low-end phones. LG’s target in handsets for this year was 140 million.

"What we want to do is to regain our competitive edge in the smartphone sector. We are not ruling out the possibility to lower the earlier projections," an LG official said.

LG’s global share in the total mobile market was around 10 percent, while Samsung Electronics was eating up over 20 percent as of the end of the first half, according to market research firms.

LG is hiring more software-related experts to guarantee the stability of the specifications of its smartphones after it had failed to attract consumers with the previous Andro-1.

It recently replaced the chief of its corporate design center and is planning to expand the number of countries where its applications are available.

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