Xiaomi is currently one of the two largest smartphone manufacturers in China. Huawei and Xiaomi are at the very top of both market share and sales charts in China. That being said, this company has been using IPS LCD displays in their devices for a long time now, we haven’t seen a single Xiaomi smartphone released with an OLED panel on it. Well, according to the latest info from China, that might actually change soon, read on.
According to a report from China, Xiaomi is wrapping up negotiations with LG Display, and might start using LG’s OLED panels in their devices soon. The negotiations are almost over, but the two companies are trying to reach an agreement over the price of those OLED panels. Xiaomi tends to release cost aware devices, so they’re trying to negotiate the best price possible with LG, but according to sources, the negotiations will be wrapped up soon.
LG Display and Xiaomi are expected to reach an agreement before the end of 2015, and Xiaomi is said to receive the first shipment of LG’s OLED panels in the second quarter of 2016. The Xiaomi Mi 5 is expected to be announced before Q2 2016, so it is hard to expect that phone will sport an OLED panel, but a number of Xiaomi-branded devices which are launched next year might actually ship with OLED displays.
Another interesting fact, Xiaomi has actually demonstrated a device with an OLED panel back in 2014, though we don’t know who was the supplier. Unfortunately, the device has never been announced, and Xiaomi has been using LCD panels to date. All in all, this is very interesting, Samsung has been manufacturing OLED panels for quite some time now, and LG has invested a lot of cash into such displays earlier this year. Both the IPS LCD and OLED panels have advantages and shortcomings, but it seems like more and more companies have started using OLED panels or plan to do that in the coming months. That is pretty much it, all we can do at this point is wait for these negotiations to wrap up, and for either Xiaomi or LG Display to confirm the deal.