LG Corporation (Hangul: 주식회사 LG), formerly Lucky-Goldstar (Korean: Leogki Geumseong; Hangul: 럭키금성; Hanja: 樂喜金星), is a South Korean multinational conglomerate corporation. It is the fourth-largest chaebol in South Korea. It is headquartered in the LG Twin Towers building in Yeouido-dong, Yeongdeungpo District, Seoul. LG makes electronics, chemicals, and telecom products and operates subsidiaries such as LG Electronics, Zenith, LG Display, LG Uplus, LG Innotek and LG Chem in over 80 countries.
LG Electronics was established in 1958 and has since led the way into the advanced digital era thanks to the technological expertise acquired by manufacturing many home appliances such as radios and TVs.
LG Electronics has unveiled many new products, applied new technologies in the form of mobile devices and digital TVs in the 21st century and continues to reinforce its status as a global company.
History
LG Corp. established as Lak Hui Chemical Industrial Corp. in 1947. In 1952, Lak Hui (pronounced "Lucky", currently LG Chem) became the first South Korean company to enter the plastics industry. As the company expanded its plastics business, it established GoldStar Co. Ltd. (currently LG Electronics Inc.) in 1958. Both companies Lucky and GoldStar merged and formed Lucky-Goldstar in 1983.
GoldStar produced South Korea's first radio. Many consumer electronics were sold under the brand name GoldStar, while some other household products (not available outside South Korea) were sold under the brand name of Lucky. The Lucky brand was famous for hygiene products such as soaps and HiTi laundry detergents, but the brand was mostly associated with its Lucky and Perioe toothpaste. LG continues to manufacture some of these products for the South Korean market, such as laundry detergent.
Koo Bon-moo renamed the company to LG in 1995. The company also associates the letters LG with the company's tagline "Life's Good". Since 2009, LG has owned the domain name LG.com.
In July 2018, it was announced that Koo Kwang-mo the only son of Koo Bon-moo will be the new CEO citing "first son-only succession rule". Koo Kwang-mo's father died of a brain tumor on May 20, 2018
Joint ventures
Since 2000, LG and Hitachi created a joint venture called Hitachi-LG Data Storage. In 2001, LG had two joint ventures with Royal Philips Electronics: LG
Philips Display and LG Philips LCD, but Philips sold off its shares in late 2008. In 2005, LG entered into a joint venture with Nortel Networks, creating LG-Nortel Co. Ltd.
International markets
On 30 November 2012, comScore released a report of the October 2012 U.S. Mobile Subscriber Market Share that found LG lost its place as second in the U.S. mobile market share to Apple Inc.
On 20 January 2013, Counterpoint Research announced that LG has overtaken Apple to become second largest in U.S. market share.
On 7 August 2013, comScore released a report of the June 2013 U.S. Smartphone Subscriber Market Share that found LG fell to fifth place in the U.S mobile market share.
