Samsung may be suing Chinese display panel maker BOE Technology over OLED patents related to iPhones, but that doesn’t stop the two companies doing lucrative business elsewhere.

It’s part of the complex relationship that exists between rival manufacturers that still collaborate despite being locked in lengthy court litigation on other matters.

On the one hand, Samsung Display is fighting against BOE over its lucrative Apple contract to provide OLED screens for the next generation iPhone 15.

On the other hand, Samsung remains a big customer of BOE panels. When it comes to older LCD screen technology, nearly 60 percent of Samsung TVs now have Chinese LCD panels, according to a report by flatpanelshd. And BOE is among the Chinese suppliers.

“Samsung Display has stopped producing LCD panels so Samsung Electronics has turned mainly to the Chinese to satisfy its huge appetite for LCD TV panels,” the publication says. “Despite launching QD-OLED TVs, the vast majority of Samsung’s TVs including “Neo QLED” still rely on a conventional LCD panel.”

The report includes a breakdown of the suppliers who supply LCD TV panels in 2023. The largest is China’s TCL CSoT, (26 percent) followed by HKC (21 percent), with BOE listed fourth at 11 percent.

In 2022, Sammobile reported toing and froing between Samsung and Chinese suppliers over OLED panels.

It said Samsung Display was not supplying all of the 155.5 million OLED panels destined for Galaxy smartphones that year, some 3.5 million OLED panels were being shipped from BOE and another 3 million from CSOT. That was up from 500,000 (BOE) and 300,00 (CSOT) the previous year.