Apple's 'iPhone 8' prompts rival smartphone makers to clamber for OLED supplies

Worried that Apple will monopolize OLED supply capacity for this year's "iPhone 8," a number of smartphone vendors are said to be racing to secure some that capacity for their own OLED products.

The situation should trigger a shortage of OLED panels this year, sources in the Taiwanese supply chain industry told DigiTimes. The people noted in fact that supplies for many components are likely to be short — including memory, LCDs, and optical sensors — because of growing demand from Chinese smartphone makers like Huawei, Oppo, and Vivo.

The problem could be amplified by those companies trying to shift further towards mid- to high-end phones. Indeed, LCD supplies may be tight as the common size of phone displays grows from 5 inches to 5.5 or even 5.7 inches.

Apple is expected to debut three new iPhones this year. Two of these belong to an alleged "iPhone 7s" lineup, with 4.7- and 5.5-inch LCDs like their predecessors. The top-end "iPhone 8" is expected to have a curved Samsung OLED panel measuring 5.1 or 5.2 inches, perhaps reflecting the trend towards bigger displays.

All three phones may support wireless charging, catching up with other high-end smartphones. That could explain rumors of Apple reverting to glass backs, since metal can interfere with wireless signals.

The "iPhone 8" may take its design even further, possibly gaining IP68 water resistance and integrating its home button and/or front sensors into the display.

12 Comments

anome 1545 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

I would love to discover that Apple were just leaking stuff about OLED and "bezel-free" displays to misdirect everyone. So all the Android manufacturers scramble to get their edge-to-edge, massive OLED display phones out, only for Apple to produce something else that no-one sees coming.

I mean, you can see from that render what the main problem with an edge-to-edge display - you can't hold it firmly without obscuring the edges of the display, which are also touch-enabled so you might end up activating something you don't want to.

thedba 790 comments · 12 Years

About 7 years ago

If Apple does go down the OLED route, they will need around 10 million of those displays for launch and a very conservative 100 million for the year, unless they plan to be supply constrained for the entire 2017-2018 FY. This assuming that 7 and 7S will be released alongside.
If they only plan a version 8 and 8+ with OLED, then the numbers will easily double.
I would think that every other manufacturer, including Samsung, is scrambling to secure their bit.

gatorguy 24608 comments · 13 Years

About 7 years ago

anome said:

I would love to discover that Apple were just leaking stuff about OLED and "bezel-free" displays to misdirect everyone. So all the Android manufacturers scramble to get their edge-to-edge, massive OLED display phones out, only for Apple to produce something else that no-one sees coming.

If there's truth to any of the Apple OLED rumors other buyers already know. They have to arrange purchases for their own displays if they've not already done so.

misa 827 comments · 13 Years

About 7 years ago

anome said:

I would love to discover that Apple were just leaking stuff about OLED and "bezel-free" displays to misdirect everyone. So all the Android manufacturers scramble to get their edge-to-edge, massive OLED display phones out, only for Apple to produce something else that no-one sees coming.
I mean, you can see from that render what the main problem with an edge-to-edge display - you can't hold it firmly without obscuring the edges of the display, which are also touch-enabled so you might end up activating something you don't want to.

I don't see "edge-to-edge" ever being a good thing, for exactly those reasons, and I hate OLED's I've seen in devices thus far. They always look dull.

I don't see Apple ever switching to OLED's for anything but iPod's and the Apple Watch. If the screen is larger than 3", the clarity of what Apple has been using so far is by far superior to what we've been seeing in competitors products.

Likewise I don't see the "home button" going away. If you've ever had the displeasure of using an Android device like this, you'd know why. You need a tactile button in order to orient the device without looking at it. You also need it for visually-impaired people to find it to use Siri. Android phones have more stupid useless buttons on them.

It's the strangest thing, I've never, ever, seen two Android devices have any common UI language. So my Dad handed me his $50 phone he got off Amazon and asked me to do something with it and nothing on it is intuitive at all. Then I was handed my Dad's sister's phone and I mentioned that she had like 100 applications running on it (eg, never actually closed a web browser window, opened a new one every time.)

Like please, Android does a lot of sinful things, and I really wish that analysts would realize that Apple is in no hurry to steal Android phone manufacturers worst ideas. The entire removing of the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone 7 obviously happened without consulting enough of the Apple user base otherwise they would have realized what a boneheaded idea it was and would have at least included a second lighting connection or a usb-c connection for digital phones while using the lightning for charging. If they remove the headphone connector from the iPad then that will not go over well with people who use it for gaming or netflix. If Samsung didn't create such a (literal) bomb with their last phone, that might have been enough to push people away from Apple to Samsung, but nope. I think we're entering the market stable period where people are loathe to switch their devices a second time and have to re-buy software/apps all over again (which is why Blackberry, Nokia and Microsoft have all failed in the SmartPhone market.)

Coming back to the entire OLED idea. It's been suggested ever since the iPhone 4S, and Cook has pooh-poohed it.
https://www.cnet.com/news/oled-displays-theyre-awful-says-apples-ceo/

"If you ever buy anything online and really want to know what he color is, as many people do, you should really think twice before you depend on the color from an OLED display," Cook said.

So I don't expect OLED's in any of Apple's phone's, tablets or iMac's for the foreseeable future.