Corning has announced a plan to close part of its manufacturing plant for Gorilla glass—a type of strengthened cover glass widely used in smartphones—in Shizuoka, Japan, and transfer the capacity to Asan, Korea, by June 2015, as reported by Nikkei on March 8. Corning says it will keep the production of glass substrates for LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) panels intact at its Sakai factory outside Osaka, Japan. In October 2013, Corning signed a deal with Samsung Display for the acquisition of Samsung Corning Precision (now Corning Precision Materials, CPM), aiming to leverage CPM's underutilized and low-cost capacity to produce LCD display glass and protective cover glass.