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Apple is all set to launch four new iPhones later today, and all of them will feature OLED displays made by Samsung. The Korean firm will supply the displays for all iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus units. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro, meanwhile, will use LG displays in some units, with Samsung supplying the rest.
Samsung, which is the world’s largest manufacturer of OLED displays for smartphones, has made iPhone displays for a long time now. Apple originally sourced most of its OLED needs from the Korean company but has been looking to diversify the supply chain in recent years. It used LD displays on about ten million iPhone 14 Pro Max units last year.
This year, Apple planned to add the Chinese display firm BOE to the mix. BOE was supposed to supply LTPS (Low-temperature Polycrystalline Silicon) type OLED screens for the base iPhone 15. However, the company has failed Apple’s quality test. It’s reportedly struggling to perfect the Dynamic Island cutout, the pill-shaped notch that’s coming to all four models this year.
With time running out, Apple has now awarded BOE’s contract to Samsung, The Elec reports. The Korean firm will now supply the entire volume of the initial LTPS OLED panel requirement for the two lower-end iPhone 15 models. Apple may still go back to BOE later if the Chinese firm fixes its issues. For the time being, Samsung is the sole supplier of displays for the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus.
“It is unclear whether BOE will approve quality within the year and there will likely be very little allocated volume this year, so it is understood that Samsung Display is in fact in charge of both general models,” the report quotes a display industry official as saying (machine-translated from Korean).
The iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max will use Samsung and LG displays
Apple will use LTPO (Low-temperature Polycrystalline Oxide) type OLED displays on the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. As said earlier, South Korean firms Samsung and LG will supply these screens. The individual share of the two companies is not known, though.
There have been reports about LG facing production disruptions. It’s unclear whether the Korean firm has fixed those issues. If not, Samsung may walk away with a bigger display order from Apple. Yield issues forced LG to hand over part of its iPhone 14 Pro Max display order last year to Samsung. The iPhone 15 launch event kicks off at 10 AM PT/ 5 PM GMT/ 10:30 PM IST.