LG who last year jumped back into the PC market after failing in the past,has snared one of the vacant PC slots at JB Hi Fi after both Sony and Samsung pulled out of market due to poor sales and their inability to make a profit in a declining market.
According to Richard Murray the CEO of JB HI Fi the Company will start ranging an expanded LG PC range shortly.
Also tipped to expand their consumer range at JB Hi Fi who saw total sales for the year ending June 30 to rise 5.3 per cent, compared with a previous forecast 6 to 8% rise is Lenovo who is also in discussions with retailers and carriers about the release of a new range of Motorola smartphones.
Murray who said that he expects to report a full-year net profit of between $126 million and $129 million, up 8.3 per cent to 10.8 per cent believes that LG “has an excellent” PC range.
He also believes that Lenovo could do well in the Australian consumer market as their consumer product range “is among the best” available today.
When LG returned to the Australian PC market in mid2013 they struck an exclusive deal with Harvey Norman.
Among the LG products to go on sale at JB Hi Fi will be a new tablet range, a new all in one PC range and new Chrome based PC’s.
One of the of the new LG product ranges will be a new G Pad series tablet range that will come in 7″, 8″ and 10.1″ sizes.
The 7.0-inch model has a WXGA (1280 x 800p) HD IPS screen and ships with 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB inbuilt eMMC memory (expandable via microSD card) and houses 3.0-megapixel main camera, 1.3-megapixel snapper on the front and a 4,000 mAh battery.
The 8″ model and the 10.1-inch model have similar specifications except for the batteries which are larger.
Both the LG tablets have a WXGA (1280x800p) HD screen, 1.2GHz quad-core processor, 1 GB RAM, 16GB eMMC expandable storage, 5.0-megapixel primary camera and a 1.3-megapixel secondary camera.
JB Hi Fi will also sell LG monitors and smart watches.
In the PC monitor market LG has only managed to get to number 4 position worldwide ahead of them are Dell, Samsung and HP.
In the notebook market LG is struggling.
Worldwide notebook shipments dropped 14.2% in the first quarter of 2014 according to Digitimes Research, LG is not among the top five vendors, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Asustek Computer, Apple and Lenovo all achieved growth in their first-quarter notebook shipments with the first three seeing growths of more than 10%, according to the latest quarterly notebook report by Digitimes Research.
Samsung Electronics and Sony who have pulled out of the PC market recently suffered declines higher than the market average in the first quarter.
