According to a recent report from South Korea, LG Display will be ramping up its smartphone OLED display production this July and will use these OLED panels for the upcoming LG V30. Sources say that most of the OLED panels coming from LG’s Gumi E5 production facility are expected to be used by LG Electronics for its upcoming flagship that’s scheduled to be released in the third quarter of the year, likely in September. While the majority of OLED panels produced by LG Display will be bought by its sister company, the display manufacturer will also supply similar panels to Chinese smartphone makers, industry insiders claim.
The LG V30 won’t be the first LG smartphone equipped with an OLED display, though its release will mark a return of this type of panels to the company’s flagship lineup. Aside from the LG V30, the upcoming LG G7 or however the firm ends up calling the successor to the LG G6 will also likely ship with an OLED screen, industry sources said. Provided that latest reports are accurate, LG will apparently follow Samsung in abandoning LCD panels for its mobile devices, at least in the premium segment of the market.
LG Display has long been capable of producing OLED displays, with its panels already in widespread use in television sets. However, the display manufacturer has yet to steal meaningful market share from the dominant smartphone OLED panel manufacturer, Samsung Display. LG Display’s bid to supply OLED panels for this year’s iPhone models is an important step in improving its competitive position in the smartphone display market but multiple obstacles forced it to wait until 2019 until it can move forward with its plans. Some of these hindrances the manufacturer is facing include low yield rates, supply chain problems, and patent issues pertaining to OLED technologies. Nonetheless, LG is still seen as a soon-to-be-important OLED panel supplier for smartphone manufacturers across the world. To keep up with the anticipated demands of original equipment manufacturers, the company has invested more than $1 billion in the construction of new production facilities that are scheduled to be completed in the next several years.