Your conspiracy theory doesn't make much sense. Any workers, whatever role they occupy in whatever department, have professional contracts with their companies that puts them under legal obligation to perform well and never harm the company no matter what. The simple reason behind LG and Sony's weird approach to software updates, pricing etc is quite obvious : They don't really care because smartphones aren't their main domain of business. Both companies are more invested in the TV business with Sony having expanded their presence to include some additional fields like audio products, photography equipment and gaming consoles while LG is more focused on other consumer electronics. That's why they don't invest as much money in making "competitive" smartphones as they focus their resources on departments that are more beneficial to them, so I can see the smartphone department of LG and Sony just trying to make decent products and that'll be it for them because they don't even bother to do any marketing campaigns to sell those smartphones so whatever their sales number is, they seem to consider it like a nice bonus and that's it.