It is being widely rumored and reported that Samsung will supply OLED panels to Apple this year for its 10th-anniversary edition, the iPhone 8. According to reports from Korean media, ET news & Chosun Biz stated that Apple has signed a two-year contract with Samsung. In this contract, Apple has asked Samsung to manufacture 92 million OLED panels worth $9 billion.
The total worth of this contract shows that these OLED panels will be between 70 to 90 million that Samsung are going to supply to Apple. However, this supply doesn’t seem to fulfill the needs of Apple. As for more, Apple is pushing Samsung to manufacture and supply more OLED panels. For this purpose, Samsung has raised its efforts to increase the production for 95 million OLED panels.
Based on the contract, Samsung Display will ship 70-92 million small-size OLED panels to Apple in 2017, said the reports. This means that about 30% of iPhone devices shipped in 2017 will come with curved OLED panels, given that Apple currently ships about 200 million iPhone devices a year.
To fulfill Apple’s requirement, reports claim that Samsung has already converted one of its LCD factories to OLED planet in the Asian region. Various OLED production units are also being installed setting a new line for OLED production. These units installation has raised Samsung’s recent investment up to KRW 10 trillion.
Apple will use All of these new OLED panels in the Pro version iPhone 8 this year. Various reports suggested that Apple initially wanted to use these OLED panels in all of its iPhone 8. But, Due to short supply and lack of vendors has forced Apple to introduce this OLED panels technology on the Pro/Premium version of iPhone 8.
Numerous reports also hint that there will be no Home button on the OLED iPhone 8, featuring a function area instead of the home button. Also, the iPhone 8 is expected to feature bezel-less design same as Galaxy S8.