Kolon Industries said on Monday that it has supplied its colorless polyimide (CPI) film to Xiaomi for use as cover window for the Mi Mix Fold smartphone.
Xiaomi is aiming to ship around 500,000 units of the foldable smartphone. The firm prepared an initial stock of 30,000 units for Mi Mix Fold. The phone costs 9,999 yuan.
Kolon Industries is the only company in the world that currently manufactures CPI films.
It began manufacturing them in 2019. It supplied the films for Huawei Mate X and Motorola Razr so far.
Besides Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo are also planning to use Kolon’s CPI films for their foldable phones.
The Korean firm’s films were also used for Lenovo’s Thinkpad X1 Fold notebook, which was launched in North America last year.
Lenovo is preparing a successor to the 13.3-inch notebook.
Kolon Industries stressed that CPI films were more price competitive than ultra-thin glass and less prone to crack.
The firm expects its CPI film supply to grow 60% every year going forward.
In the first quarter, Kolon Industries recorded 1.09 trillion won in sales and 69.1 billion won in operating income.
Sales jumped 10.2% year-on-year. Operating income jumped 160.3% in the same time period. The company saw high demand for aramid from 5G cables and high performance tires.
It also saw demand for its films in displays and electric car batteries, Kolon added.
