South Korean handset maker LG Electronics Inc. said Saturday it spent more than 6 percent of its earnings on research and development through September of this year in a bid to develop high-end products.

The company said it had allocated 2.26 trillion won (US$2.08 billion), or 6.06 percent of its sales of 37.4 trillion won earned during in the January-September period, up 1.1 percentage points from a year earlier.

Market watchers said South Korea's No. 2 tech giant increased its research fund to develop top-tier products and beef up its market share.

This year, LG Electronics introduced high-end devices including an ultra-definition TV with a 84-inch screen and the Optimus LTE 2, a smartphone that runs on the faster long-term evolution network.

Samsung Electronics Co., the country's top handset maker, spent 8.8 trillion won, or 6.1 percent of its sales on research and development over the cited period.

Meanwhile, LG Electronics reaped an operating profit of 21.5 billion won in the third quarter with its handset business, marking a turnaround from a 138.8 billion won loss tallied in the previous year.

LG said smartphone sales surged 59 percent on-year to a record 7 million units in the July-September period, thanks to robust sales of the Optimus LTE and Optimus Vu models. (Yonhap News)