Xiaomi founder to hold talks with Samsung about Chips & OLED

Xiaomi’s founder and CEO Lei Jun is touted to be planning a trip to Seoul, South Korea this week to have a meeting with Samsung’s execs about a possible alliance in components supply, industry sources disclose.

The hot-selling Chinese brand’s CEO is visiting Korea, home to the world’s largest smartphone manufacturer and rival Samsung, for the first time.

According to industry analysts, Lei Jun will during the visit meet with Jeon Young-Hyun, who is president of Samsung’s memory chip business division who overses chips for smartphones.

Lei is expected to discuss a possible partnership in the manufacture and supply of chips for Xiaomi’s devices by Samsung. The Chief exec of Xiaomi is also expected to meet with Samsung display division executives, also to negotiate a possible alliance in OLED displays for Xiaomi phones and other LED packing devices. Currently, Samsung is reputed to dominate by more than 90 percent, the mobile OLED market

Since the announcement of Apple’s planned adoption of organic light-emitting diode display, other smartphone-makers, including those from China who are looking to compete on the global turf, are expected to use OLED display screen for their next high-end models. Xiaomi is said to be outsourcing chip products such as the crucial memory chips with high-density capacity and will only manufacture directly the mobile application processors.

A partnership between the company tagged the “Apple of China” and Samsung will be a boost for Samsung as it looks to diversify clients in the lucrative China market beyond just  the Samsung branded devices.