LG Tries Android Smartphone in European Market

The LG-GW620 with 3" touchscreen and slide-out keypad is LG's first smartphone running on the Android Linux platform.

As part of their "aggressive strategy" LG is following up its newest released Windows phones with an Android version, to "underscore LG's commitment to offering greater consumer choice in the expanding smartphone category." The LG-GW620 phone comes with a 3" touchscreen, a slide-out KWERTY keypad and 5-megapixel camera so that it can be used for more than making phone calls. The company decided on Google's Linux operating system because of the many mobile services and applications it supports.

The device should appear on the European market in the fourth quarter of 2009. The company of about 56,000 isn't mentioning price, nor are they issuing a data sheet as yet. The question remains whether the phone will actually ship in the "select" European market with the U.S.-oriented QUERTY keypad, as the LG press release indicates.

A sense is that the "Life is Good" company, founded in 1958, might have some misgivings about its Android phone. Their press release for the Android phone is infused with frequent mention of their newest Windows devices, emphasizing, for example, 13 new Windows smartphones in the next 16 months.