The ChosunBiz in Korea has reported that a senior LG manager has promised “I will not repeat this mistake” with the next smartphone, the G6, after disappointing sales of the G5, which had modular features. It looks as though the hopes of being able to use a flexible display, to compete with the Samsung Edge product, are likey to be thwarted because of the currently limited capacity for flexible displays of LG Display. It’s not clear that the G6 will continue with the modular theme (which we think has been better done by Lenovo, as we reported at IFA Lenovo Innovates All Over)
Analyst Comment
LG, of course, used the flexibility of the plastic OLEDs in its G2, but didn’t capture the imagination of buyers the way that Samsung has, although I was impressed watching an LG executive hammering on a desk with his phone behind the scenes at ISE when it was new! Once the full investments that LG Display is making in flexible OLED come to fruition, the supply situation may change. The company is building a G6 fab, but this won’t be fully yielded until late 2017 or early 2018, so it’s unlikely that there will be a phone based on that capacity until MWC in 2018 at the earliest and that may depend on whether LG Display wants to supply Apple (if it goes for flexible OLEDs) (BR)
