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Kolon Supplies CPI to Huawei and Motorola for Cover Lens on Foldables
November 04, 2019
 
Kolon Industries was a leader in the competition to provide Samsung with a ‘colorless transparent polyimide (CPI)’ but lost the business to Sumitomo Chemical. The company spent more than 10 years of R&D on CPI and has been used by Huawei for the ‘Mate X’, which is supposed to go on sale within China on the 15th of next month CPI is a type of super-engineered plastic that is resistant against heat and impact and flexible at the same time. Kolon Industries started its R&D process on transparent PI in 2006. It started working on the development of CPI believing that the value of colorless and transparent PI would be high if it is able to replace glass and it finally succeeded in developing its own transparent PI in 2016. Kolon Industries invested $77.1 million (90 billion KRW) in order to commercialize its transparent PI on full-scale and it also built the industry’s first transparent PI mass-production plant. Although it was recognized for its technical skills as it had participated in almost every development project of foldable Smartphones, it had gone through continued delays. The size of supply of Kolon Industries’ transparent PI for Huawei has not been confirmed, but the Mate X will cost more than $1,700 (2 million KRW) and is being only sold within China, the supply by Kolon Industries’ will be quite limited. Prior to supplying transparent PI to Huawei, Kolon Industries also supplied its transparent PI to Royole for its foldable Smartphone. However, Royole being more of a display manufacturer rather than a Smartphone manufacturer so its foldable Smartphone seems to be more of an experiment. It is likely that Kolon Industries’ transparent PI will also be seen through other foldable Smartphones shortly. The Motorola’s Razr 4 reportedly uses Kolon Industries’ CPI. Motorola’s foldable Smartphone has its top and bottom screens folded inwards. Kolon Industries would not say much about its customers when asked about Huawei and Motorola. 
From: etnews.com