Chooses to Rely on Samsung Display
Samsung Electronics has temporarily stopped efforts to develop foldable glass, a key component of foldable smartphones. Breaking away from its previous strategy of internalizing foldable glass, it took a sharp turn towards securing price competitiveness by relying on the supply chain of Samsung Display.
"The Samsung Electronics management came to a conclusion that it is advantageous to increase the efficiency of the current supply chain rather than making foldable glass on its own," an industry insider said on Dec. 17
Samsung Electronics is currently receiving display modules for foldable smartphones from Samsung Display. Dowoo Insys processes mother glass from Schott in Germany into ultra-thin glass and Samsung Display combines it with OLED panels for supply to Samsung Electronics.
Samsung Electronics has reportedly sought to develop a new type of glass which is thicker than the product supplied by Samsung Display but is still foldable. To this end, it acquired mother glass from U.S. company Corning and purchased laser equipment to develop a high-yield manufacturing process.
Samsung Display recently contacted a company that supplies laser equipment to Samsung Electronics to introduce a new foldable glass manufacturing method. Currently, Dowoo Insys uses a cutting method after stacking sheets of mother glass and drawing a shape on them with a scriber. Industry experts say that the method is complicated compared to cutting mother glass sheets with laser equipment and does not lend itself to heightening yields in a short period of time.