Bigger yields could let Samsung churn out 180-200M iPhone OLED panels in 2018

By Roger Fingas

Samsung Display has allegedly improved the yield rates for the OLED panels used in the iPhone X, and could manufacture as many as 180 to 200 million OLED panels for Apple next year.

While rates were as low as 60 percent earlier in 2017, those have increased to nearly 90 percent, according to Korea Herald sources. The difficulty of manufacturing the iPhone X's edge-to-edge display was reportedly an assembly bottleneck, though the larger problem may have been the device's 3D-sensing TrueDepth camera.

To date Samsung is said to have supplied about 50 million iPhone X panels.

Launch-day stocks of the phone were extremely low, with shipping delays quickly stretching out into weeks. In the past month, however, those delays have shrunk dramatically, to the point that the phone is available for next-day delivery or same-day pickup in many cases.

Apple is thought to be preparing two OLED iPhones for late 2018. One should measure 5.8 inches, like the X, but the other may reach a colossal 6.5 inches, dwarfing even Samsung's 6.3-inch Galaxy Note 8. People wanting size at a lower cost may be able to get a 6.1-inch LCD iPhone.