Samsung is currently the largest smartphone manufacturer in the world, while Xiaomi is number one smartphone manufacturing company in China. Samsung mainly uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon SoCs, or their very own Exynos processors, while Xiaomi mainly relies on Snapdragon SoCs, though they are known for using MediaTek’s offerings as well. That being said, Xiaomi tends to release a ton of devices a year, and they’re constantly looking how to boost their portfolio. In order to do that, the company might opt to start using AMOLED displays, instead of the IPS LCD panels they’ve been using thus far. Such rumors have been roaming around for quite some time now, and it seems like Xiaomi plans to turn to Samsung for help, read on.
According to Korea Herald, Xiaomi’s CEO, Lei Jun, is visiting South Korea’s capital, Seoul, for the first time ever. Now, the company’s CEO is there to meet Samsung’s executives, and it is quite likely that the two companies will discuss displays and processors during the meeting. The report says that Lei Jun is meeting Jeon Young-hyun, the president of Samsung’s memory chip division for Smartphones, and he will also meet Samsung Display executives as well. Now, the following info is only speculation, but based on the aforementioned info, it is quite probable Lei Jun is there to talk about Samsung’s OLED panels, and even their Exynos smartphone SoCs. Samsung is the leader in the OLED market at the moment, the company holds the vast majority of the market (90%), so it is definitely not a surprise that Xiaomi is turning to Samsung for smartphone displays. Now, in addition to all this, it is possible Lei Jun is there to talk with Samsung about curved displays, the company is allegedly working on a curved display smartphone, much like the Galaxy S7 Edge, and they might be asking Samsung to supply displays for it.
Samsung’s Exynos 8890 64-bit octa-core SoC is perhaps even the most powerful mobile SoC available in the market at the moment, so it wouldn’t exactly be surprising if Xiaomi wanted to include it in one of their devices this year, or perhaps even more than one. We expect to get some more info regarding all this after the meetings take place, though who knows how much info will Samsung and Xiaomi share, if any. Either way, stay tuned, we’ll keep you posted.