LG Electronics

LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean multinational electronics company headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG Corporation, the fourth largest '' chaebol'' in South Korea, and often considered as the pinnacle of LG Corp with the group's chemical and battery division LG Chem. It comprises four business units: home entertainment, mobile communications, home appliances & air solutions, and vehicle components. LG Electronics acquired Zenith in 1995 and the largest shareholder of LG Display, world's largest display company by revenue in 2020. LG Electronics is also the world's second largest TV manufacturer behind Samsung Electronics. The company has 128 operations worldwide, employing 83,000 people.

History

1958–1960s

In 1958, LG Electronics was founded as '' GoldStar'' (). It was established in the aftermath of the Korean War to provide the rebuilding nation with domestically produced consumer electronics and home appliances. The start of the country's national broadcasting that created a booming electronics market and a close relationship it quickly forged with Hitachi helped ''GoldStar'' to produce South Korea's first radios, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines and air conditioners. ''GoldStar'' was one of the LG groups with a brethren company, Lak-Hui (pronounced "Lucky") Chemical Industrial Corp. which is now LG Chem and LG Households. ''GoldStar'' merged with Lucky Chemical and LS Cable on 28 February 1995, changing the corporate name to Lucky-Goldstar and then finally to LG Electronics.

1970s–1990s

Goldstar first went public in 1970; by 1976, it was producing 1 million televisions annually. In 1982, Goldstar opened its first overseas factory, which was based in Huntsville, Alabama.

In 1994, ''GoldStar'' officially adopted the LG Electronics brand and a new corporate logo. In 1995, LG Electronics acquired the US-based TV manufacturer Zenith and absorbed it four years later. Also in that year, LG Electronics made the world's first CDMA digital mobile handsets and supplied Ameritech and GTE in the US, the LGC-330W digital cellular phone. The company was also awarded UL certification in the US. In 1998, LG developed the world's first 60-inch plasma TV and established a joint venture in 1999 with Philips LG.Philips LCD which now goes by the name LG Display. In 1999, LG Semiconductor merged with Hynix.

2000s–present

In order to create a holding company, the former LG Electronics was split off in 2002, with the "new" LG Electronics being spun off and the "old" LG Electronics changing its name to LG EI. It was then merged with and into LG CI in 2003 (the legal successor of the former LG Chem), so the company that started as ''GoldStar'' does not currently exist.

LG Electronics plays a large role in the global consumer electronics industry; it was the second-largest LCD TV manufacturer worldwide as of 2013. By 2005, LG was a Top 100 global brand and recorded a brand growth of 14% in 2006. As of 2009, its display manufacturing affiliate, LG Display, was the world's largest LCD panel manufacturer. In 2010, LG Electronics entered the smartphone industry. LG Electronics has since continued to develop various electronic products, such as releasing the world's first 84-inch ultra-HD TV for retail sale.

On 5 December 2012, the antitrust regulators of the European Union fined LG Electronics and five other major companies (Samsung, Thomson since 2010 known as Technicolor, Matsushita which today is Panasonic Corp, Philips and Toshiba) for fixing prices of TV cathode-ray tubes in two cartels lasting nearly a decade.

On 11 June 2015, LG Electronics found itself in the midst of a human rights controversy when ''The Guardian'' published an article by Rosa Moreno, a former employee of an LG television assembly factory.

At the end of 2016, LG Electronics merged its German branch (situated in Ratingen) and European headquarter (situated in London) together in Eschborn, a suburb of Frankfurt am Main.

In March 2017, LG Electronics was sued for its handling of hardware failures with recent smartphones such as the LG G4.

Koo Bon-joon, who was the CEO and the current vice chairman of LG Electronics, was replaced by his nephew Koo Kwang-mo in July 2018 as CEO and vice chairman. The move came after the succession of Koo Kwang-mo as the chairman of the parent company LG Corporation who succeeded his adoptive father and uncle Koo Bon-moo after Bon-moo died of a brain tumor on 20 May 2018.

LG announced in November 2018 that Hwang Jeong-hwan, who took the job as president of LG Mobile Communications in October 2017, will be replaced by Brian Kwon, who is head of LG's hugely profitable home entertainment business, from 1 December 2018. Also in 2018, LG decided to stop smartphone production in South Korea to move production to Vietnam, in order to stay competitive. LG said Vietnam provides an "abundant labor force" and that 750 workers at its South Korean handset factory would be relocated to its home appliance plant.

On 5 April 2021, LG announced its withdrawal from the phone manufacturing industry after continuous loss in the market. In 2020, LG faced a loss of 5 trillion won (US$4.4 billion).

In June 2021, the YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed published a video alleging an attempt by a representative of LG to manipulate the review of one of LG's gaming monitors. The representative, in an email shown in the video, attempts to influence the editorial outcome of the review by indicating testing methods and aspects of the display to be followed by the channel. This came a few months after a similar incident between the creators and Nvidia in which Nvidia warned them that if they continue emphasizing on rasterization rather than ray tracing in Nvidia's graphics cards, they would no longer receive review samples.

As of 1 December 2021, the current Chief Strategy Officer William Cho will take over for Bong-seok Kwon as the CEO of LG Electronics.

In June 2022, LG acquired AppleMango, a South Korean EV charger manufacturer with a 60% purchase of the company's stocks

In June 2022, the American publication Consumer Reports rated LG home appliances as the most reliable in the U.S. consumer market.

COVID-19 response

On 25 December 2021, LG Electronics launched a video campaign showing some of the initiatives the company has taken during the COVID-19 pandemic to support India. The video shows how the company has handled the pandemic from the beginning and includes urgings of good hygiene practices to include social distancing, hand-washing, mask wearing, and using hand sanitizers.

In a strategy to cope with demand for contactless shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, LG Electronics has opened a number of unmanned stores that allow for customers to authenticate themselves at the main entrance, check product information, and purchase products using a mobile phone or QR code. The company currently operates nine unmanned stores and this will increase to 30 by the end of June 2022. Currently these retail locations are only available in South Korea.

United States headquarters

In 2013, LG Electronics USA proposed building a new headquarters in the borough of Englewood Cliffs

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