Apple All Set to Change The OLED Landscape

Apple is reportedly resorting to LG Display for producing millions of new OLED display panels for the up and coming iPhone models. This certainly would be a great opportunity for the display manufacturer to challenge Samsung big time. Apple is planning on introducing a new iPhone line that will feature OLED screens on all the models and that has certainly increased the demand for such displays. If the report is believed to be accurate, the production of LG Display will see a massive hike to meet the demand.

With news coming up earlier that Apple will likely be going all-OLED across its line of iPhones this year, there was a new discussion everywhere on the competition it would spark among the suppliers. Nikkei Asian Review quoted unnamed sources as saying that Apple will receive 20 million OLED display panels from LG Display this year.

The OLED display panel industry is primarily dominated by Samsung Electronics right now. However, with this business move from Apple, assuming the report claimed correctly, would provide LG Display with a wonderful opportunity to challenge its competitor. After facing losses in last few quarters, the company will now be able to ramp up the manufacturing and produce 5 times more OLED displays as compared to what it produced last year.

This new move also highlights the rise of a new competitive market with LCDs slowly becoming a thing of past. However, it is yet to be seen how LG Display copes with this new challenge and proves itself as a legit supplier of smartphone displays. Currently, Samsung holds most of the shares in small OLED panels market.

One obvious reason why Apple is tapping LG Display to fulfill some of its display requirements is that it will help the smartphone manufacturer develop some diversity in suppliers. As a result, Apple’s dependency on Samsung will be reduced significantly as well. The dominance of Samsung in this market has always helped the company to deal on favorable terms. Their contract with Apple requires them to be paid when the panel shipments do not reach a particular minimum threshold.

With some diversity in the OLED panels market, there will be more competition which is probably going to give some space to Apple to close deals on more favorable terms. In fact, it’s not the first attempt Apple has made on such diversification – Apple used LG Display to get OLED panels previously as well but they weren’t able to fulfill Apple’s demand.

According to the new report, LG Display has now managed to sort things out related to the required yield issues and will now be increasing its production. And, as it appears, Apple is more interested in stop relying on Samsung for all its OLED requirements now.

If the claims of the sources are to be believed, LG Display has a point to prove here as they face serious competition from BOE Technology Group, the Chinese manufacturer ranking third on this market. If LG Display fails to deliver this time around, Apple would be more likely to turn to BOE for their OLED display requirements.