LG Display’s latest plan to make an additional investment in plastic organic light-emitting diodes indicates that Samsung and LG would be double vendors for Apple’s new iPhone to be unveiled in 2018, industry sources said Wednesday.

LG Display said Wednesday it plans to invest around 2 trillion won ($1.76 billion) -- equivalent to around 15 percent of the display-maker’s equity capital -- to produce around 15,000 plastic OLED sheets per month in its Paju plant. 

Plastic OLED, which uses plastic instead of glass sheets, can be used for bendable, rollable and foldable displays.

LG Display already made an investment of around 1 trillion won in its Gumi plant for plastic OLED, which is slated to produce around 15,000 sheets a month from early next year.

From the second half of 2018, the display-maker will be able to produce around 6 million flexible smartphone displays -- 3 million units each from the Gumi and Paju plants -- per month.

“Through the latest investment, Samsung Display and LG Display may be double vendors for Apple’s new phone in 2018, although LG’s portion will still be minor,” Kim Young-woo, an analyst from SK Securities, told The Korea Herald.

Japan Display, which was viewed as a strong candidate for the new iPhone, may find it hard to be a third supplier because it has no OLED deposition equipment -- key for OLED production -- made by Japanese company Tokki, Kim added.

“Apple requires display-makers to use deposition equipment made by Tokki, whose capability is already proven. However, Tokki is currently not capable of providing deposition equipment other than to Samsung and LG,” another source said.

Recently, global display-makers have been busy boosting investments in OLED, as Apple reportedly plans to shift their smartphone displays from liquid crystal displays to OLED from next year.

Samsung Display currently has more than 95 percent market share in OLED and is predicted to be capable of providing around 600 million flexible smartphone displays annually in 2018, according to research firm IHS data.

Japanese Sharp, which was recently acquired by Taiwanese company FoxConn, plans to mass produce OLED panels next year, while Japan Display is also building assembly lines with an aim of mass producing the panels by 2018.

China’s biggest display-maker BOE is expanding OLED production capacity with the goal of mass production early in 2018.

On the same day, LG Display saw its operating profit slip 91 percent year-on-year in the latest quarterly earnings. The display-maker posted operating profit of 4.4 billion won, with its revenue standing at 585 billion won, a 13 percent drop from the same period of last year.

The poor performance was mainly due to falling prices of displays, including LCDs, fueled by the increasing investment of Chinese and Taiwanese companies in the large-size LCD segment.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)