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By Kim Yoo-chul
LG Electronics might release its new smartphone G4 in April, sources said Friday.
"LG Electronics decided not to release the G4 at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) exhibition in Barcelona in March," a source said. "It may release it in April." The G3 was released on May 27 of last year.
Another source said that from a marketing point of view the MWC was not the right place to show off the G4 because Samsung will unveil its Galaxy S6 there. He said LG will wait until it is fully ready.
"Samsung usually releases its new flagship model in the first quarter of each year, and Apple in the second quarter," he said. "We need some in-between time to make a bigger splash."
LG Electronics' newly appointed mobile chief, Cho Juno, will talk about the company's updated business strategies at a meeting with Korean reporters during the MWC fair.
Samsung will not use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 processor for the S6 smartphone due to overheating issues.
Unlike Samsung Electronics, which has developed its own processor chips, LG depends on Qualcomm's technology, meaning that if Qualcomm processor chips have problems then LG has no option but to push back its plan for a key product release.
But Qualcomm said its chips remained on track and it expected commercial devices to be available in the first half of this year.
"This is very rare that Qualcomm has responded to market rumors," said an official who is involved with the matter.
A processor chip functions as a brain to control an entire computing device, while memory chips are used to read, write and store data.
