DQW Exclusive: LG to exit from LCD monitors

With display manufacturers becoming more and more focused on LEDs, manufacturers' commitments for LCDs seem to be on the wane. LG appears to be phasing out its LCD monitor line, shifting its emphasis to LEDs completely by H1 2012.

In an exclusive interview with The DQWeek, Sanjoy Bhattacharya, product group marketing head, LG India said, "LCD monitors continue to die off, hopefully by the end of H1 2012, we will be completely out of our LCD monitors range, wherein the entire industry will be shifting from LCD to LED display by Q3 2012. Having said that, we still sell 20% of LCD monitors range. In fact as per our planning, we will discontinue the production of LCD monitors by Q1, but we will keep some trade stock available until Q2 2012."

Moreover, for monitors and optical drive product line, LG is shifting all its gears to deeper pockets of towns. Currently, its dealers are present in 1,200 towns, which the company will be expanding to 2,000 by adding another 800 semi-urban/rural towns in July 2012. Apart from this, LG will be putting focus to do more dealer management programs.

"Our focus over the next couple of years is to increase penetration in small cities. For this, we are spending 1% of our revenue on System Builders Development Officer (SADO). Over the past 6-8 months, we have deployed 175 on-field people and their job is to engage with the system builder community in small cities and towns in order to understand their needs, and to equip them with training on system building and LG products. Moreover, we are looking at adding 300 more SADOs," he added.

LG has grown quantity-wise by 12 %, in-spite of the last quarter of 2011. Also, its monitors business has de-grown in top 5 cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, and Kolkata.

On its newly introduced notebook, LG remained slow to lure metros, but it has gained unexpected response from some of the pockets like Rajasthan, Orissa, Mumbai upcountry, Punjab, Gujarat, Coimbatore, Madurai, etc. Thus, the company has identified these cities for a pilot project and will be exclusively hiring manpower and putting investment on marketing resources to drive its notebook business. Likewise, it will get into 20 new markets for the notebook.

Another product line in which LG is making its foray is ultrabook category. LG is scheduled to launch its two models of ultrabooks in the mid of March, 2012. The company will be rolling out its Intel based ultrabook in top 9 cities through large format retailers.

"We will be focusing high on ultrabooks, our strategy is to focus on top 9 cities- Delhi, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Pune, Bengaluru, and Chennai. We will be doing a big buzz on ultrabooks which would be available at the price point of Rs 70,000. With our ultrabook range, we intend to become leading player in the ultrabook category. In the first phase, we will cater to LFRs, but channel will get it in the Q2," highlighted Bhattacharya.

The company has also deferred its plans to introduce its printer range. After ultrabooks, LG will also launch Mouse Scanner, a portable scanner with OCR technology. Lastly, in line with its corporate strategy, LG India will be integrating its IT business under the umbrella of home entertainment.