apple lcd panel factory

Apple tasked BOE with making iPhone 13 displays last October, a short-lived deal that ended earlier this month when Apple reportedly caught BOE changing the circuit width of the iPhone 13’s display’s thin-film transistors without Apple’s knowledge. (Did they really think Apple wouldn’t notice?).

This decision could continue to haunt BOE, however, as Apple may take the company off the job of making the OLED display for the iPhone 14 as well. According to The Elec, BOE sent an executive to Apple’s Cupertino headquarters to explain the incident and says it didn’t receive an order to make iPhone 14 displays. Apple is expected to announce the iPhone 14 at an event this fall, but The Elec says production for its display could start as soon as next month.

In place of BOE, The Elec expects Apple to split the 30 million display order between LG Display and Samsung Display, its two primary display providers. Samsung will likely produce the 6.1 and 6.7-inch displays for the upcoming iPhone 14 Pro, while LG is set to make the 6.7-inch display for the iPhone 14 Pro Max.

According to MacRumors, BOE previously only manufactured screens for refurbished iPhones. Apple later hired the company to supply OLED displays for the new iPhone 12 in 2020, but its first batch of panels failed to pass Apple’s rigorous quality control tests. Since the beginning of this year, BOE’s output has also been affected by a display driver chip shortage.

While Samsung will continue to supply approximately 80 per cent of iPhone displays, rumours claim that a little-known company called BOE looks set to become Apple’s second-largest OLED supplier. Not only is this a sign that Apple’s lowest-cost iPhone 12 model will likely make the leap from LCD to OLED this year, but it’s also a sign that Apple is looking to diversify which manufacturers it uses, and potentially looking to ready itself for a move into the display market itself.

The company, which was founded in Bejing in 1993 and acquired SK Hynix"s STN-LCD and OLED businesses back in 2001, is ranked second in the world when it comes to flexible OLED shipments, holding a market share of 11 per cent during the first quarter of this year. It, naturally, is still a long way behind market leader Samsung, which owned 81 per cent market share of the OLED market in the same quarter. Still, with a sizable chunk of the OLED market already under its belt, it perhaps won’t come as too much of a surprise – now, at least – that the firm already has some big-name allies.

BOE’s surprising alliance with Apple isn’t the only time the two companies have worked together, either; the Chinese manufacturer already makes LCD screens for Apple"s older iPhones, and its tiny OLED panels are currently used in some Apple Watch models. It’s unclear how much BOE and Apple’s latest deal is worth, but it’s likely in the billions. According to online reports, Samsung’s deal with the iPhone maker is thought to be worth around $20 billion annually, so if BOE manages to secure 20 per cent of Apple’s display orders going forward, such a deal could be worth as much as $4bn.

Although BOE has managed to muscle its way into Apple’s exclusive list of OLED suppliers, and has invested heavily in facilities and equipment in order to meet the firm’s demands, the new partnership hasn’t got off to a flying start. According to reports, the company’s flexible OLED panels have not yet passed Apple’s final validation. This means, according to rumours, that BOE’s screens might not show up in the first batch of iPhone 12 models, and will instead start shipping on handsets at the beginning of 2021, with Apple instead set to re-increase its reliance on LG in the short term.

Scenarios like this, along with the fact that Apple is clearly looking to lessen its reliance on big-name display makers, makes us think that it won’t be long until the company ultimately stops relying on others altogether; after all, it’s no secret that Apple wants to control every aspect of its hardware development.

The display market could be Apple’s next target. Not only does the company already manufacturer screen technology in the form of its Pro Display XDR, but a recent Bloomberg report claims that Apple is “designing and producing its own device displays” and is making a “significant investment” in MicroLED panels. This technology utilises newer light-emitting compounds that make them brighter, thinner and less power-intense than the current OLED displays.

Apple’s efforts in MicroLED are reportedly in the “advanced stages”; the company has applied for more than 30 patents, and recent rumours suggest the firm is also considering investing over $330 million in a secretive MicroLED factory with the goal of bringing the technology to its future devices.

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* Independent Repair Providers have access to genuine Apple parts, tools, training, service guides, diagnostics, and resources. Repairs by Independent Repair Providers are not covered by Apple"s warranty or AppleCare plans, but might be covered by the provider"s own repair warranty. Self Service Repair provides access to genuine Apple parts, tools, and repair manuals so that customers experienced with the complexities of repairing electronic devices can perform their own out-of-warranty repair. Self Service Repair is currently available in certain countries or regions for specific iPhone models introduced in 2021 or later. To view repair manuals and order parts for eligible models, go to the Self Service Repair page.

The problems faced by tertiary Apple display supplier BOE appear to have gone from bad to worse, according to a new report. The company is now in danger of losing all orders for the iPhone 14.

Too many of the company’s displays were failing to pass quality control checks, and BOE reportedly tried to solve this by quietly changing the specs – without telling Apple …

Chinese display manufacturer BOE was only ever third-placed in Apple’s supply chain, behind Samsung and LG, but was still hoping to make as many as 40M OLED screens this year for a range of iPhone models.

The biggest issue is not with CPUs and GPUs, but far more mundane chips like display drivers and power management systems. These relatively low-tech chips are used in a huge number of devices, including Apple ones.

Yield rates are always a challenge for Apple suppliers, as the company’s specs are often tighter than those set by other smartphone makers. Even Samsung Display, which has the most-advanced OLED manufacturing capabilities, has at times had yield rates as low as 60% for iPhone displays.

The company was caught having changed the circuit width of the thin film transistors on the OLED panels it made for iPhone 13 earlier this year, people familiar with the matter said.

The Chinese display panel sent a C-level executive and employees to Apple’s headquarters following the incident to explain why they changed the circuit width of the transistors.

They also asked the iPhone maker to approve the production of OLED panels for iPhone 14, but didn’t receive a clear response from Apple, they also said.

Cupertino seems poised to give the order for around 30 million OLED panels it intended to give BOE before the incident to Samsung Display and LG Display instead.

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As Apple mainly relies on Samsung and LG to manufacture its OLED panels for the iPhone, another Chinese factory wants a piece of Cupertino’s company money. As reported by

CSOT, together with Apple, first review the OLED panel produced from its T4 factory at Wuhan, China, sources said. The factory is designed to house three phases for a total capacity of 45,000 substrates per month. Two phases are currently live.

As of now, the Chinese company had supplied OLED panels for Samsung’s Galaxy M models in 2021. CSOT will also supply OLED panels for Galaxy A73 this year, The Elecreports.

The publication notes that it won’t be an easy path for CSOT, as China’s largest display panel maker BOE had failed “multiple times in Cupertino’s evaluation processes before finally being able to supply OLED panels to the iPhone maker.”

As 9to5Mac reported earlier this week, BOE, which currently manufactures OLED panels for iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 – and will do the same for this year’s iPhone 14 – will try to supply displays for iPhone 15 Pro as well.

Although Apple has a very high standard on its supply chains, having more options is good. As The Elec notes, “Cupertino can also already use BOE to pressure Samsung Display and LG Display into lowering their unit prices. BOE’s OLED production capacity will also expand to 144,000 substrates per month by the end of this year or early next year, triple that of the maximum capacity at CSOT’s T4 factory.”

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Samsung, a key Apple supplier that manufactures a number of vital components for iPhone, iPad and Mac, on Tuesday said it plans to cease traditional LCD panel production by the end of 2020.

In announcing the development, a spokeswoman for Samsung Display, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, said the company will end all LCD manufacturing in South Korea and China by year"s end, reports Reuters. The company in October announced the shutdown of one domestic plant due to weak demand.

Over the next five years, the tech giant will sink money into converting one of its two South Korean LCD plants into a production facility for quantum dot displays.

Used in conventional hardware like LED-backlit LCD panels, quantum dots can be "tuned," or manufactured, to emit very narrow spectrums of light when struck by energy from a common blue backlight, making them a prime candidate for display makers. Further, the construction of a quantum dot LCD panel is similar to that of a traditional LCD screen, with the addition of quantum tubes or films situated next to or on top of backlight LEDs.

Samsung has not decided what to do with the two LCD factories in China that will wind down operations as part of the strategy announced today, the report said.

Samsung has in the past supplied LCD screens for products including iPhone, iPad and Mac, but demand has waned as Apple and other smartphone brands move to OLED. The Korean company fills a bulk of Apple"s OLED orders for flagship iPhone models and Apple Watch, with LG picking up the slack. Chinese firm BOE is reportedly set to enter Apple"s supply chain in 2020 or 2021.

In the immediate future, Apple is rumored to launch at least six devices with mini LED screens, another LCD-based technology that enhances picture quality through highly specific local dimming and better color reproduction.

Samsung"s shift leaves Apple with LG, Japan Display and Sharp as its major LCD screen suppliers, though each are readying their own proprietary OLED products.

It is the iPad that will (hopefully) benefit. It is cheap. It is versatile as it can function either in tablet mode or in laptop mode and so it has a distinct functional advantage over strictly tablet or laptop investments. Plus, since most remote learning tools are web based, a school can assign an iPad to the school"s Apple ID while allowing a student to sign on to their own remote learning ID (say to Google Classroom or Kahn Academy).

Foxconn, one of the electronics manufacturers that makes Apple"s iPhones, revealed plans today to build a factory in Wisconsin to produce flat-screen displays. Foxconn"s total investment in the Wisconsin factory amounts to $10 billion, more than the original $7 billion that Foxconn had been talking about investing in US manufacturing since Donald Trump took office as President. The factory will create at least 3,000 jobs and upwards of 13,000 jobs, as well as up to 22,000 induced jobs in other parts of Wisconsin. President Trump praised the deal at the press event, claiming it was a win for anyone who "believes in the label "Made in the USA.""

Foxconn will build flat-screen LCD display panels at the new factory under the Sharp brand, which the company bought in 2016 for $1.5 billion. At the press event, Gou and Governor Walker emphasized LCD display manufacturing for the automotive, healthcare, and other industries, rather than OLED display manufacturing.

Currently iPhones still use LCD displays, which means the Wisconsin factory could potentially provide LCD panels for those handsets. However, Sharp President Tai Jeng-wu has suggested in the past that Apple could use OLED displays in the future. There have also been rumors of OLED displays being used in forthcoming iPhone 8 models, but nothing has been confirmed. Currently there"s no official word that any panels made in the new Wisconsin factory will be used in Apple products going forward.

Don"t expect Apple to fully produce iPhones in the US anytime soon either. President Trump announced this week that Apple plans to build three "big" manufacturing plants in the US, but Apple did not announce that with him, nor did the company comment publicly on that notion. There are a number of incentives keeping iPhone production in China, including tax breaks and subsidies. Even if the incentives provided to Foxconn in Wisconsin are a step in a new direction, much more negotiation and work would need to be done before iPhones or any Apple products are completely "made in the USA."

Nowadays, LCD panels for smartphone displays are taking the back seat while tech companies move towards OLED screens, including Apple. Samsung Display, one of Apple’s suppliers for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch displays, announced today that it is going to end LCD production in its China-based and South Korean factories by the end of 2020.

Reuters now reports that Samsung is moving on with its factories, but will still supply LCD display orders until the end of the year. The company has two LCD production lines in South Korea and two LCD-dedicated factories in China.

The production of LCD displays by Samsung has already been in decline since last year, as demand for LCD screens is continuously decreasing. In October, Samsung closed one of its LCD production lines in South Korea. Additionally, the company stated that it will invest around $10.72 billion in research and improvements for their production lines of quantum dot screens.

From time-to-time, we"ve passed along some news on Apple"s long-time LCD supplier Japan Display. The company had the misfortune of sinking a lot of money into new factories just as Apple was making the move to OLED panels for the iPhone. Apple has helped prop up the company this year by investing a reported $100 million into a restructuring of the company and moving some of its LCD production from China to Japan Display"s facilities. Japan Display has lost money for 11 straight quarters, and while it was late to start producing OLED panels, it now produces the AMOLED screens employed by the Apple Watch Series 5. Apple contributes 60% of Japan Display"s annual revenue.

The Nikkei Business Daily reports today that Japan Display is talking to Apple and Sharp about selling its main smartphone display factory for as much as $820 million. Sharp is a unit of Foxconn, a contract manufacturer responsible for assembling the majority of iPhone units sold globally. Sharp also sells displays to Apple and said that it was talking to Japan Display about purchasing the factory after an unnamed client requested that it do so. In a statement it released, Sharp said, "We are carefully considering it, reviewing the impact that any purchase would have on our earnings, and whether and how much risk it would entail." Besides Foxconn, the report suggests that Wistron could be included in the purchase of the factory. Wistron is another company used by Apple to manufacture its products including the iPhone.

The factory, located in Hakusan City, Ishikawa prefecture in western Japan, cost $1.5 billion to build back in 2015, and Apple fronted that money to Japan Display. As part of the deal with the display manufacturer, Apple was to be reimbursed by taking a cut of each LCD panel display sold. But with smartphone manufacturers turning to AMOLED, the plant was running at only 50% capacity. As a result, Japan Display still owes Apple more than $800 million.

Another report says that Sharp will actually purchase the LCD production facilities by next March and will reach a separate agreement with Apple after the deal is closed. The factory has been shut since this past July. Japan Display released a statement today saying that it is looking at all options but isn"t sure what it will do about the factory. The company adds that nothing has been decided and when it does make a decision, it will notify the press. Earlier this month, the company said that it was looking to receive $200 million from a customer, believed to be Apple, for equipment from the plant. But now it appears that Japan Display is taking a different path.

Last year, the panel manufacturer lost $2.3 billion following a $260 million loss in 2017. The firm is one of three companies supplying Apple with the Liquid Retina Display for the iPhone 11 along with LG Display and Sharp. According to reliable TF International analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple could release four new models next year. Forgetting the difference between 4G and 5G models, only one of the four will use an LCD display and that is expected to be the 4.7-inch iPhone9.

(Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. is planning to start using its own custom displays in mobile devices as early as 2024, an effort to reduce its reliance on technology partners like Samsung and LG and bring more components in-house.

The company aims to begin by swapping out the display in the highest-end Apple Watches by the end of next year, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The screens upgrade the current OLED — organic light-emitting diode — standard to a technology called microLED, and Apple plans to eventually bring the displays to other devices, including the iPhone.

The changes are part of a sweeping effort to replace Apple supplies with homegrown parts, an undertaking that will give the company more control over the design and capabilities of its products. The tech giant has dropped Intel Corp. chips in its Mac computers in favor of in-house designs and plans to do the same with the key wireless components in its iPhones.

Samsung is the world’s most advanced manufacturer of displays, and has been producing its own version of microLED for TVs. But by bringing the screens in-house, Apple could, in the long run, better customize its devices and maintain a stronger hold on its supply chain.

Apple’s screen switch has been underway for years. Bloomberg first reported in 2018 on the company’s plan to design its own displays, starting with the Apple Watch. The move will deal a blow to Samsung Display Co. and LG Display Co., the two main suppliers of the watch’s screens.

LG Display shares fell as much as 4.1% on Wednesday after Bloomberg reported the news. Shares of Samsung Electronics Co., meanwhile, pared most of its gains during morning trading in Seoul. Apple shares were little changed at $131.01 in New York on Wednesday morning.

Apple’s project is being led by Wei Chen, who runs Apple’s display technology group within Johny Srouji’s Hardware Technologies division. The company has begun testing the microLED displays on an update to the Apple Watch Ultra, its new high-end sports watch.

Compared with current Apple Watches, the next-generation displays are designed to offer brighter, more vibrant colors and the ability to be better seen at an angle. The displays make content appear like it’s painted on top of the glass, according to people who have seen them, who asked not to be identified because the project is still under wraps.

The microLED displays will be Apple’s first screens designed and developed entirely in-house. The company currently sources screens from a range of manufacturers, including Japan Display Inc., Sharp Corp. and BOE Technology Group Co., in addition to Samsung and LG.

Samsung and LG declined to comment. Apple accounts for 36% of LG Display’s revenue, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Samsung, which competes with Apple in the smartphone market in addition to serving as a supplier, gets about 6.6% of its sales from the iPhone maker.

The work, codenamed T159, ramped up around 2018 and Apple had set a goal to begin switching to microLED screens as early as 2020. But the project languished due to high costs and technical challenges, people involved in the work said. Apple initially aimed to include the technology in large displays, but those concerns led it to focus instead on its watch — whose screens measure about 2 inches — as its first mobile device with the capabilities.

Apple’s 2024 target could potentially slip until 2025, some people involved in the project said. The company also could just offer a limited supply of the new devices to get the transition started.

Though Apple has designed the new displays and devised their manufacturing process, it will likely rely on an outside supplier to handle mass production. The company operates a 62,000-square-foot facility in Santa Clara, California — about 15 minutes away from its Apple Park headquarters — where it conducts test manufacturing of the screens. It has a similar research and development campus in Taiwan.

Apple has devoted several billion dollars so far to the effort, which is considered internally to be one of the company’s most critical projects — alongside its attempts to develop an electric car, a mixed-reality headset and key health features for its watches. The company spent about $26 billion on research and development in fiscal 2022.

In the near term, the new displays are the most significant changes coming to the Apple Watch. The company plans to introduce new models at the end of this year, but they will be modest updates focused on faster chips and minor health sensor upgrades. Apple hasn’t updated the main processor inside of its watch for three years.

The company has also customized the displays for its upcoming headset, which will use similar technology to the microLED screens coming to the Apple Watch. While it will take years before Apple moves the iPhone to microLED, it plans to bring OLED technology to the iPad with the Pro model in 2024.

The shift to microLED has been a long time coming for Apple. The effort began in 2014 when Apple bought startup LuxVue, which pioneered microLED technology. The development of Apple’s own screens had been led by veteran executive Lynn Youngs within Apple’s hardware engineering division, but the work was shifted two years ago to the purview of Srouji, who oversees the company’s custom chip group.

Flat-panel displays are thin panels of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying text, images, or video. Liquid crystal displays (LCD), OLED (organic light emitting diode) and microLED displays are not quite the same; since LCD uses a liquid crystal that reacts to an electric current blocking light or allowing it to pass through the panel, whereas OLED/microLED displays consist of electroluminescent organic/inorganic materials that generate light when a current is passed through the material. LCD, OLED and microLED displays are driven using LTPS, IGZO, LTPO, and A-Si TFT transistor technologies as their backplane using ITO to supply current to the transistors and in turn to the liquid crystal or electroluminescent material. Segment and passive OLED and LCD displays do not use a backplane but use indium tin oxide (ITO), a transparent conductive material, to pass current to the electroluminescent material or liquid crystal. In LCDs, there is an even layer of liquid crystal throughout the panel whereas an OLED display has the electroluminescent material only where it is meant to light up. OLEDs, LCDs and microLEDs can be made flexible and transparent, but LCDs require a backlight because they cannot emit light on their own like OLEDs and microLEDs.

Liquid-crystal display (or LCD) is a thin, flat panel used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. They are usually made of glass but they can also be made out of plastic. Some manufacturers make transparent LCD panels and special sequential color segment LCDs that have higher than usual refresh rates and an RGB backlight. The backlight is synchronized with the display so that the colors will show up as needed. The list of LCD manufacturers:

Organic light emitting diode (or OLED displays) is a thin, flat panel made of glass or plastic used for electronically displaying information such as text, images, and moving pictures. OLED panels can also take the shape of a light panel, where red, green and blue light emitting materials are stacked to create a white light panel. OLED displays can also be made transparent and/or flexible and these transparent panels are available on the market and are widely used in smartphones with under-display optical fingerprint sensors. LCD and OLED displays are available in different shapes, the most prominent of which is a circular display, which is used in smartwatches. The list of OLED display manufacturers:

MicroLED displays is an emerging flat-panel display technology consisting of arrays of microscopic LEDs forming the individual pixel elements. Like OLED, microLED offers infinite contrast ratio, but unlike OLED, microLED is immune to screen burn-in, and consumes less power while having higher light output, as it uses LEDs instead of organic electroluminescent materials, The list of MicroLED display manufacturers:

LCDs are made in a glass substrate. For OLED, the substrate can also be plastic. The size of the substrates are specified in generations, with each generation using a larger substrate. For example, a 4th generation substrate is larger in size than a 3rd generation substrate. A larger substrate allows for more panels to be cut from a single substrate, or for larger panels to be made, akin to increasing wafer sizes in the semiconductor industry.

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TOKYO -- Struggling Apple supplier Japan Display plans to sell a smartphone screen factory and the land it sits on to Sharp for 41.2 billion yen ($386 million), the company has announced.

A deal for the Hakusan liquid crystal display plant in Ishikawa Prefecture, along with sale of equipment there to a customer believed to be Apple, will earn Japan Display $668 million while cutting excess capacity that has weighed on earnings.

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Toshiba Corp will spend about 100 billion yen ($1.19 billion) to build a factory for making small LCD panels, mainly to supply to Apple Inc’s iPhones, the Nikkei business daily said.

The company’s wholly owned unit, Toshiba Mobile Display Co, will construct the facility in Ishikawa prefecture and the plant will churn out low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels, which allow for high-resolution images, the paper said.

Toshiba Mobile Display already makes low-temperature polysilicon LCD panels at a facility in the prefecture and its monthly production capacity of 8.55 million units is projected to more than double with the new factory, the daily said.