JNTC supplies curved cover glass for Huawei’s P40
To produce 3D cover glass for cars in 2H
Chinese smartphone parts maker JNTC is to supply curved cover glass to Huawei’s premium smartphone P40 Pro, according to industry sources on Jan. 28. Back at home, JNTC is preparing to get listed on the tech-heavy Kosdaq market in March this year.
The OLED panels for the P40 Pro will come from LG Display and Samsung Display. JNTC will be supplying the cover glass for half of the panels supplied by LG. The product is one of the most sophisticated models out there, curved to a degree of nearly 90 degrees.
Up until 2017, JNTC’s tempered glass revenues came mostly from Samsung Electronics and Samsung Display. But since 2018, LG affiliates including LG Display accounted for half of its business to surpass Samsung.
As of the third quarter of 2019, half of JNTC’s tempered glass sales originated from Samsung affiliates, 38% from LG Electronics’ affiliates and 7% from China’s BOE. In June last year, JNTC established BNJ, a joint venture with BOE. As of Jan. 13, JNTC held a 24.08% stake by investing 25.5 KRW billion. The rest was invested by BOE affiliate Beijing BOE Vision-Electronic Technology.
BNJ signed a technology transfer contract with JNTC worth around KRW 40 billion, and has received around half of it. Some critics have raised concerns that the BNJ may give birth to more rivals in 3D glass processing technology in China. JNTC said that it would cope in such situations with new products.
JNTC has led the global 3D cover glass market by rolling out the world’s first product and playing a major role in the launching of Samsung’s Galaxy Edge series smartphones featuring curved edges. JNTC supplied all the curved cover glass for the Galaxy Note Edge 4, the Galaxy S6 Edge and the Galaxy S7 Edge.
During the second half of this year, JNTC also plans to mass produce 3D cover glass for automobiles, according to a company official. The firm has also completed developing cover glass for foldable OLED panels.
As of Q3 in 2019, JNTC posted KRW 224.9 billion of revenues and operating profit of KRW 32.6 billion. During the like period, the firm recorded KRW 74.3 billion of sales at its connect business – JNTC is a big supplier of various connector parts going into smartphones.
In 2016, JNTC had posted record-breaking sales of KRW 304.4 billion, but since then have been showing slower growth.
The Elec is South Korea’s No.1 tech news platform.