In a bid to reduce their reliance on Samsung, Apple is said to have invested into LG to help them get their OLED production up and running. In fact one of the rumors of the 2018 iPhone is that LG could be the OLED supplier for at least one of the rumored models. However it turns out that might not necessarily be the case.
A report from The Bell (via PhoneArena) out of Korea, it seems that LG isn’t quite ready to provide OLEDs for the iPhone just yet. The company is only said to be in the testing phase for mass production of the panels, whereas Samsung has already started delivering batches of OLED panels back in June.
This means that LG is so far behind that according to the report, LG could only end up supplying around 2-4 million units, versus the 75 million units that Samsung will be supplying. In fact if things don’t pick up and if the OLEDs produced by LG don’t meet Apple’s standards, LG could end up only supplying to Apple for repair or replacement purposes which is no doubt a drop in the bucket compared to if they were supplying for the iPhones that would be going on sale.
Either way we’ll have to wait and see how this pans out, but until then maybe take it with a grain of salt.