South Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. will be releasing affordable versions to the latest flagship G6 amid disappointing retail response to its new spec-packed premium phone released in April.

LG Q6 and Q6 Plus are mid-range smartphones, but nevertheless sport key features and functions of its premium G6 model. They are priced at a range of 400,000 won ($348) and 500,000 won, making them more affordable than its premium sibling. They are also smaller in size with a dimension of 142.5 x 69.3 x 8.1 millimeters, but offer 18:9 aspect ratio on 5.5-inch screen.

The new smartphone models using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 435 application processor runs on Android 7.1.1 Nougat operating system.

The phones are equipped with a 100-degree wide 5-megapixel front-end camera and a single 130-megapixel rear-end camera. Also, they offer special picture-taking functions such as food mode and GIF mode and allow users to edit them while taking pictures.

The Q6 comes with 3-gigabyte(GB) of random access memory (RAM) and 32GB of storage, and the Q6 Plus with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Both models will be available in various color options including black and blue.

The launch of LG’s affordable mid-range smartphone models comes after the company last week reported weaker-than-expected earnings guidance for the second quarter due to tepid sales of its high-end G6 smartphone series.

Experts estimated the sales of LG’s new G6 flagship smartphone to have fallen short of the target of 2 million units. The increased marketing costs following the new release might also have undermined overall profitability, market analysts suspected.

The company plans to launch Q6 and Q6 Plus smartphones in Korea early August and expand out to other regions like Americas and Europe afterwards.

By Kim Dong-eun

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business News Korea & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]