Report: Google to invest $880 million in LG to secure OLED panels for Pixel smartphones

Google wants to make sure it won’t have any supply issues with the upcoming Pixel generation. The company is offering to invest at least 1 trillion won, which is around $880 million, in LG’s display division in order to help it increase production of flexible OLED screens.

The report comes from Etnews and also claims that the online search giant wants to make the investment in order to secure a stable supply of the displays for the Pixel smartphones. Google was working with Samsung last year, which supplied AMOLED screens for the Pixel and Pixel XL.

It looks like Google wants to do things a bit differently this year, maybe because of the recent deal that Apple has made with Samsung. Apple has reportedly ordered 70 million bendable OLED displays from the South Korean tech giant, which will be used on the iPhone 8.

Because of this deal, the supply of OLED displays might be limited this year. In order to sidestep this issue, Google is willing to open up its wallet and help LG boost production. The company is reportedly willing to invest even more money, depending on the supply conditions and other details of the contract.

If the deal will be made, we can expect that the new Pixel smartphones will feature flexible displays made by LG. Other details about the new Pixel generation remain unknown for now, but we do expect that we’ll see two devices — just like last year — that will go head to head with other flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and LG G6.