No more LG smartphones. The South Korean company announced Monday (April 5) that it will shut down its cell phone business. The move, approved by the electronics giant's board of directors, puts an end to months of speculation about the fate of LG smartphones.

LG handsets will not disappear from store shelves immediately; the company plans to wait for the current supply to dwindle without replacing inventory. Existing LG phones will continue to receive support, but the exact duration will vary by region. We look forward to specific clarification on what that means for U.S. customers who currently own LG phones.

What is still up in the air is what will happen to handsets that are on LG's drawing board but not yet in stores. Specifically, we're thinking of the LG Rollable, a phone with an expandable screen that LG showed off at this year's CES; LG had announced plans to ship a rollable phone this year, but that announcement has apparently been scrapped; we're not sure if LG will be cutting that product line off to competitors. We are still waiting to hear. LG's statement announcing the closure of its phone business made no mention of that.

"Core technologies developed during LG's 20 years of mobile business operations will also be retained and applied to existing and future products," was all the company said in its statement announcing the mobile business closure.

LG said it plans to end its involvement with smartphones by July 31.

It is not difficult to understand why LG is exiting the smartphone business: for LG, the business has never been able to get out from under the shadow of major manufacturers such as Apple and Samsung, nor has it been able to stave off increasing competition from Chinese smartphone makers such as Huawei and Oppo because they were not able to compete with the likes of Huawei and Oppo.

We spoke with Tuong Nguyen, a senior principal analyst at Gartner, last week when LG's mobile business closure was still a rumor. Nguyen noted that even at LG's peak, the company had less than a 10% share of the global smartphone market; by the end of 2020, that share had fallen to 2%.

LG has pulled resources away from smartphone development and will instead focus on electric vehicle components, connected devices, smart home, robotics, AI, and products for business. Future mobile efforts will also include working on technologies related to the development of 6G wireless networking.