Mobile-phone maker LG InfoComm U.S.A. Inc. has been “in the closet, so to speak,” according to Michele Thenegal, the company’s marketing director.
While LG InfoComm hasn’t been completely dormant during its time in the closet-the company said it garnered about 11 percent of the U.S. CDMA handset business during the past two years-LG InfoComm certainly isn’t considered a wireless bigwig.
That, however, is about to change, company executives gleefully assert.
“I think LG is coming out of the closet, so to speak,” Thenegal said.
Headquartered in San Diego, LG InfoComm is the North American operating division of LG Electronics Inc., which is a member of the giant and far-reaching multibillion-dollar company LG Group of Seoul, Korea. LG Group’s operations stretch across the world, ranging from electronics and telecommunications to sports and home shopping.
LG Electronics was one of the first companies to sign a co-development licensing agreement with Qualcomm Inc. in the early 1990s, and it supported the launch of CDMA carrier SK Telecom’s network in Korea in 1996 with both infrastructure and handsets. Now LG Electronics is backing SK Telecom’s cdma2000 1xRTT network upgrade.
In the late 1990s, LG InfoComm made its first moves into the United States through now-bankrupt NextWave Telecom Inc. Before the NextWave license saga began, LG InfoComm invested in the carrier, along with Qualcomm and a variety of other Korean companies. LG InfoComm even assisted NextWave in initial trials of the carrier’s planned network.
As NextWave began to spiral toward the ill-fated license re-auction, LG InfoComm scoped out two more CDMA colleagues, Verizon Wireless and Sprint PCS. And today some of those carriers’ most popular phones-the ones that have Sprint and Verizon’s names printed on the case-were designed and manufactured by LG InfoComm.
And that, company executives said, is what’s really going to change.
“By next year, you will definitely see LG Electronics-branded products,” Thenegal said.
LG InfoComm plans to burst from the closet with an array of co-branded phones with Sprint and Verizon, which will prominently feature LG InfoComm’s name. This effort, along with a nationwide ad campaign promoting the LG brand, will make the company’s logo a household name, LG InfoComm executives hope.
“It’s going to be a really strong message,” Thenegal said, adding that the campaign should start in September and gain full steam by the beginning of next year.
Not surprisingly, LG InfoComm is timing its advertising launch to coincide with the rollout of Sprint and Verizon’s 1x network upgrades, which are scheduled for the end of this year. LG InfoComm has 1x phones ready and waiting for the launch. Although the company isn’t the only vendor ready to reap network-upgrade profits, spokespeople for Verizon and Sprint wouldn’t discuss which other mobile-phone manufacturers have plans to participate in the hoopla.
LG InfoComm’s 1x phones, the LG-TM520 and the LG-DB525, offer a variety of high-speed data features, but perhaps the best selling point is that they have been tested on SK Telecom’s fully operating 1x network, LG InfoComm executives said.
“When we come to market the bugs will have been worked out,” Thenegal said.
So what’s next after LG InfoComm raids the U.S. handset market? Curtis Wick, LG InfoComm’s director of testing and technical support, said the company would target the infrastructure business, and is not afraid to go up against such mainstays as Nortel Networks and Lucent Technologies Inc.
