According to a recent interview with LG Mobile"s European VP, Kim Wong, LG won"t be making the next Nexus phone, claiming that while the device was a "great success" for the company, they don"t need to repeat that success again. LG is also weary of releasing a new phone without their own custom skin, with Won saying there is "no added value for us" in going with vanilla Android.
When a senior LG official clarified this statement to The Verge, it seems that the partnership with Google has not abruptly ended: LG hasn"t got a Nexus 5 in production, but they would still work with the company in the future if given the opportunity.
Only Samsung has made consecutive Nexus devices, producing the Nexus S and Galaxy Nexus, with LG taking the reigns for the last model (the Nexus 4) and HTC producing the original Nexus One. While the Nexus 4 was widely praised for including an up-to-date chipset and being very cheap to purchase outright, the camera was heavily criticized, while availability problems plagued many users wanting to buy the device.
LG also has a new Android tablet in the works, according to Wong, although the tablet market is "fairly segmented" at the moment. The last Google-powered tablet the Korean company produced was the Optimus Pad LTE, an 8.9-inch Android 3.2 tablet released in early 2012, with Windows tablets also largely ignored outside Korea.
Finally, Wong stated that LG is looking to producing smartphones using an OS other than Android, as the "current duopoly of Google and Apple is not healthy for the market." If you thought this might mean LG will return to making Windows Phones, think again, as Wong said that Microsoft"s mobile OS is a "low priority" at this stage; this means we"ll likely see a Firefox OS device or an entirely different OS on an LG phone sometime in the future.
Source: All About Phones (1), (2), (3), The Verge | Image via Tested