Why Did LG Stop Making Tablets?

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Korean conglomerate LG is known for its TVs, its washers and dryers, and its refrigerators, but it also used to be a big name in mobile devices, too. It actually found early success in its Optimus series starting in 2011, but tumbled through the next decade against domestic rival Samsung, culminating in the company quitting the Android business in 2021. Why did LG stop making smartphones? It seemed the company’s tendency to aim for a niche concept like modular accessories, curved form factors, and a focus on content creation in the hopes of floating it to the mainstream never quite took on. The mobile division was bleeding money and that needed to stop.

The shuttering of the mobile division also meant that tablets were seemingly off the table as well. But LG’s last Android tablet, the Ultra Tab, came out in 2024. Even more shocking, that Ultra Tab was a follow-up to an identically named model from 2022 — barely a year after it quit the mobile race. LG never quite put any stock into making the few tablets that it did, so what gives? Why did it stop making tablets, only to make them again?

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LG’s history with Android tablets is a short one, even if it spans more than a decade. Apple released the original iPad in 2010, and as with the iPhone, competitors swarmed to make their own — but not LG. Why? Sources told The Korea Times in 2011 that tablet sales in Korea were tepid, costs to produce were high, and that the company would hold its blueprints back for the time being. The word from Samsung? First movers get the advantage. Samsung has been moving ever since with multiple mid-range and flagship models on annual refresh for years on end.

LG took until 2013 to unveil the G Pad, and even then, it didn’t hit the market until 2014. The company returned with the G Pad II in 2015, then the G Pad III and IV in subsequent years, and then released the G Pad 5 in 2019. All of these tablets featured either mid-tier or older flagship components — the G Pad IV’s Qualcomm Snapdragon 435 got switched up to a three-year-old Snapdragon 821 with the G Pad 5. They were fine if modest products on their own, though they were often bagged as a freebie for carrier promotions.

By the time the manufacturer announced its exit from Android, tablet owners were no longer getting OS upgrades. The company’s mobile devices never lasted as long as, say, LG TVs usually last.

Out of the blue in 2022, LG announced the Ultra Tab. It continued the G Pad’s lineage of middling specs and mediocre value, but unlike the prior series, the Ultra Tab was only available as a business-to-business device in South Korea. We don’t have the numbers on just how successful it was, but it was apparently sending enough good signals for LG to update the tablet in 2024. It’s not clear if the company will continue the Ultra Tab line — 2026 would be about the time for a refresh — but we’re pretty certain if you want to buy any one of them through official means, you’ll find yourself out of luck.

It’s important to remember the outsized position LG has as a chaebol (literally “wealth clan”) in Korean society. The conglomerate has fingers not just in electronics (though we believe LG has some of the best electronics around), but in chemicals, telecom, and energy storage as well. Thanks to the scale it has achieved over the decades, the loss of a limping business means very little to the bottom line. So, if it makes sense for LG to make tablets for enterprise clients, it might just keep doing so. Some mobile tech diehards, though, still wish for a comeback that everyone could share in.