Apple partners with LG to make folding and flexible OLED iPhone
It is known that Samsung, Microsoft and Apple are all actively working on foldable smartphones. While Samsung is planning to unveil “bendable Galaxy X smartphone” next year, it looks like its rival Apple too has made further headway in this direction.
According to a Korea media outlet, Apple is collaborating with OLED maker LG Display, a display solutions arm of LG, to release an iPhone with a foldable OLED display in the near future. For this development, Apple will take help from LG Innotek, a sister company of LG, who has been tasked with developing rigid-flexible printed circuit board to work in tandem with the screen. The foldable OLED iPhone screen production could reportedly start in 2020, when the LG Display’s new production plant in Paju, South Korea, dubbed as E6 will be finished being built, report unnamed sources.
For the past three years, LG has been working on folding OLED panels on its own. It has already completed the foldable OLED screen prototype and is now upgrading its durability and also the yield rate.
LG Display started the OLED production for phones at its Gumi E5 factory in Korea’s North Gyeongsang Province. There are reports that Apple is actively considering to invest a significant amount in the LG plant responsible for the manufacturing of flexible OLED displays to speed up the production process.
It is strange that Apple is teaming up with LG for foldable phones considering that the tech giant recently used Samsung Display’s OLED panels for the iPhone X. As a result, it is expected that Samsung will be the supplier of displays for Apple next year too.
With Samsung rumoured to launch Galaxy X featuring foldable display next year, looks like Apple is treading with caution so that their technology is not used by its rival to develop a foldable screen.
