Information from Korea indicates that the three iPhone of 2019 will all be equipped with OLED tiles. However, the manufacturing capacity of its suppliers seems too limited to achieve this.
Does Apple have the means to pass all its range from iPhone to OLED? That’s what the Korean business daily ETNews thinks. According to him the three iPhone models of 2019 will be well and indeed equipped with such a slab, relegating LCD screens to the past.
“Apple has decided to use OLED for all new iPhone models in 2019,” explains the publication citing an anonymous official of the brand. However, if there were more than three versions of the new model, an LCD model could be maintained.
Samsung is the only supplier up to the challenge
However, many doubt Apple’s suppliers’ ability to produce enough OLED tiles for its customer. For now, only Samsung can provide enough copies for the iPhone X,” Bloomberg explains. Making enough OLED tiles for Apple is a logistic performance: the brand sold 216 million smartphones in 2017.
The other potential Korean manufacturer, LG, seems to be in the mix and cannot keep up with the pace yet. Despite significant investments in its factories, the company will only be able to install 5 to 10 million OLED tiles supplied to Apple for the time being.
The microLED alternative
“The ultimate plan for Apple is to move completely to OLED as soon as possible, but that’s not yet possible,” explains IHS analyst Jerry Kang, still in Bloomberg. Another, Arthur Liao, based in Taiwan at Fubon Securities also wrote in a note that he has never heard of Apple equipping all its iPhones with OLEDs.
Apple is also working on a possible successor to OLED: the microLED. After buying LuxVue in 2014, Apple repatriated its expertise from Taiwan to Santa Clara, California. Perhaps the beginning of real independence of Apple from its suppliers. Unless the company eventually needs to manufacture its microLED displays from the factories of Samsung and LG.
Here is a teardown analysis of what can be found inside the iPhone X from Apple. See for yourself by watching the following video :