LG phone with rollable display allegedly coming in March, but first a classic flagship
LG’s focus at the start of next year will be on two projects – Rainbow and B Project. The former is expected to be a classic flagship, a continuation of the V-series. The latter is will have a rollable screen.
It’s part of LG’s Explorer Project, which gave us the unorthodox LG Wing. B Project will have a similarly “out there” design – part of the screen will be rolled up for compactness but will be rolled out during use for a larger screen size.
LG teased this device at the end of the Wing announcement, you can see it in the video below (we’ve cut out just the relevant part):
Rainbow will come in the first quarter of 2021, followed shortly by B Project in March. According to Korean publication The Elec, LG is expected to ship around 26 million smartphones this year and is aiming higher for next year, mid-30 million units.
The publication also reports that LG will be shifting even more phone lines to ODMs. In 2018 only 10% or so of LG phones were made outside of the company, the ODM share rose to 30% in 2019 and should be 60% this year. Next year the share is expected to grow to 70%.
The original plan was to have entry level and mid-range phones manufactured by ODMs, however, even relatively premium phones will reportedly be handed off to partners – including the LG Velvet 2. The follow-ups to the LG Q92 and LG Stylo will also be made by ODMs while this year’s units were manufactured by LG itself.
All of this will free up LG to focus on the strategically important phones – the Rainbow and the new Explorer Project models.
Here’s what the company wrote in a press release in September:
“The Explorer Project will focus solely on new usability that is discovered with innovative designs while LG’s new Universal Line will be the company’s lineup of competitive devices that focus on consumer lifestyles, such as LG VELVET.”
