LG Taking Break From Nexus Line to Focus on Own Brand

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If you’ve been looking forward to the next LG Nexus, you’ll want to brace yourself, as there are bad news coming from the Korean OEM. At MWC 2016, a spokesman for the company said that LG will not be making a Nexus this year. Rather, and as CNET reports, “LG needs focus on its own brand” for the foreseeable future.

Understandably, the Nexus program ties up resources that could be spent on the promotion – and development of – its own devices. Looking at the G5, that’s not necessarily bad for us consumers. If there’s more of that to come, it bodes well.

Worth keeping in mind is that, while LG has partnered with Google on three occasions now, it’s not a continuous partnership that is being broken up. After making the much-loved Nexus 4 and 5, the Nexus 6 was instead manufactured in 2014 by Motorola, before LG returned last year to make the 5X. This means that it’s still very much possible that we’ll see another LG Nexus device in the future, just not this year. More worryingly, however, the decision to focus on its own devices might also be a result of the 5X being overshadowed in sales by its flagship brother, the 6P, but with exact figures kept from public view, it’s hard to say. LG did state that it was happy with the partnership with Google, and no indication was given that the partnership itself would be coming to an end.

It’s not all bad, however. The same spokesman also let us know that the Watch Urbane LTE 2nd Edition will be brought back, after being cancelled just days after sales started in November last year. Back then, a late discovery of an issue was deemed severe enough to warrant a complete cancellation of the rollout, but that would now appear to be solved. What’s more, it will also be accompanied by an entirely new smartwatch releasing sometime later in the year, but no further details about the second device was given.