And that loss was triple the one projected by analysts.
Late to the smartphone market and slow to innovate once it arrived, LG–the world’s third-largest mobile phone maker–has been dragged down by its handset division, which continues to struggle for…purchase in the smartphone market. That’s got to change and quickly, too, if the company hopes to return to profitability anytime soon. Because while LG sold more handsets in its second quarter, they were largely low-end phones whose prices were slashed to boost sales. End result: An operating loss margin of 3.5 percent in the company’s handset division, compared with a 0.9 percent profit margin in the first quarter.
LG said earlier this year that it’s investing more heavily in smartphone R&D in the hope of developing a device that can compete with the likes of the iPhone and Droid, and its leadership reiterated that commitment during an earnings call today. But it cautioned that it is unlikely to see any meaningful momentum until later this year following the debut of some new Android-based smartphones. “We are increasing investment in research and development to launch competitive smartphone models and thus any meaningful recovery is unlikely in the near future,” LG CFO Jung Do-hyun explained. “Our handset business will continue to experience difficulties in the third quarter and would start recover from the late fourth quarter.”
The highest video bitrate with the H.264 codec is 768 kilobits per second. The biggest picture size for your H.264 movie is 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels high, the exact dimensions of your iPod’s screen. Your iPod can play H.264 video at framerates up to 30 frames per second. Every one of the applications that we’ll be using encodes with the Baseline Profile. Your audio needs to be encoded as AAC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48 kHz, and it can be in either stereo or mono. As long as you follow all the guidelines, your movie can be a QuickTime movie or an MPEG-4 movie file.
Your other option, MPEG-4 video, supports a much higher bitrate than H.264 video - 2,500 kilobits per second. Using higher bitrates will also create larger files. The result: you’ll have less space for additional songs and movies. The biggest picture size for your MPEG-4 video is 480 pixels wide by 480 pixels high - three times as many pixels as your iPod’s screen is capable of displaying. Your iPod will shrink the picture proportionally so that everything fits on the screen. Again, the iPod can play videos up to 30 frames per second and our audio and file format options are the same as H.264 video.
