LG Electronics chief vows to boost partnerships with global tech firms

Cho Joo-wan, CEO of LG Electronics, answers questions from reporters at the IFA 2024 press conference held in Berlin, Germany. [Courtesy of LG Electronics Inc.]

LG Electronics Inc. Chief Executive Officer Cho Joo-wan vowed on Friday that the South Korean company will enhance cooperation with global tech companies and actively engage with investors to elevate its presence.

“LG Electronics is Qualcomm Inc.’s biggest customer in the automotive industry,” Cho said. “We are discussing how to implement evolving AI technologies in vehicles.”

Cho’s comments were made last week during a press conference held on the sidelines of IFA 2024, a consumer electronics show in Berlin, Germany.

LG Electronics is also increasing its collaboration with Microsoft Corp.

“I recently attended the MS CEO Summit and met with MS CEO Satya Nadella once again,” Cho said. “We discussed the potential of AI applications and its possibilities for LG Electronics.”

One example of this collaboration is LG ThinQ ON, which debuted at IFA. It incorporates generative AI built on GPT-4o, using MS‘s Azure Cloud. The Q9, a portable AI home hub, also uses MS’ AI technology.

The company also plans to continue its cooperation with Meta Platforms Inc.

“We are considering further collaborations with Meta, particularly in the areas of on-device AI and large language models (LLMs), while remaining cautious about ventures into extended reality (XR),” Cho said.

LG Electronics also plans to expand its lineup of premium products to outmaneuver cost-effective Chinese companies by boosting its collaboration in artificial intelligence (AI) and premium appliances.

“Chinese companies are formidable competitors,” he told reporters. “We will avoid repeating the mistakes made by Japanese companies.”

This signifies a departure from the path taken by some Japanese companies that lost market share to LG Electronics by focusing solely on premium strategies.

”We’ve been targeting the top 60 percent of customers with premium pricing, but this will broaden moving forward,” he said. “We aim to target up to the top 70 to 90 percent of the market.“

The company is also determined to recapture the robot vacuum cleaner market, which is currently dominated by Chinese companies.

While acknowledging that LG Electronics was slow to enter this market, he noted that his company’s robot vacuum cleaners are technically competitive.

”LG Roboking has just started selling, and we won’t accept being second in this market,“ he said.

LG Electronics is also accelerating its value-up strategy.

Its executives will meet with overseas investors in the United Kingdom and Singapore after IFA 2024.

”Not many people realize that we grow by more than 10 percent annually and have an operating profit margin of 10 percent,” Cho said. “We plan to highlight this to investors in London.“

The company is also set to host an LG Tech Day at Japanese automaker Toyota Motor Corp.‘s headquarters in Japan this week to showcase its automotive components.

The company held a similar event earlier with Mercedes-Benz Group AG in Stuttgart, Germany.

Meanwhile, LG Electronics has acquired a stake in the U.K.-based virtual production (VP) solutions company Mo-Sys Engineering Ltd.

LG Electronics said that the acquisition allows the company to combine its LED displays and controllers with Mo-Sys products and systems, enabling better support for customers building VP solutions.