Mike Wuerthele
Apple has invested into Gorilla Glass manufacturer Corning with the first award for $200 million from the Advanced Manufacturing Fund investment pool, to support "revolutionary glass production methods."
On Friday, Apple announced that Kentucky's Corning Incorporated will get the first disbursement from the fund for the company's "R&D, capital equipment needs, and state-of-the-art glass processing."
"Corning is a great example of a supplier that has continued to innovate and they are one of Apple's long-standing suppliers. This partnership started 10 years ago with the very first iPhone, and today every customer that buys an iPhone or iPad anywhere in the world touches glass that was developed in America," said Apple Chief Operating officer Jeff Williams. "We're extremely proud of our collaboration over the years and we are investing further with Corning who has such a rich legacy of innovative manufacturing practices."
Apple notes that the partnership between it and Corning has generated and sustained 1,000 jobs, with 400 in Harrodsburg, Kentucky alone. Also likely contributing to the award is Corning's acquisition of enough renewable energy to cover all of its Apple manufacturing in the U.S.
Corning is on its fifth iteration of Gorilla Glass. According to the company, the new product survives up to 80 percent of the time when dropped face-down from a height of just over five feet onto rough surfaces, as opposed to the smoother surfaces that previous testing was performed on. Previous drop testing was performed from around 40 inches.
Apple currently uses sapphire for the Apple Watch Series 2, the Touch ID sensor covering, and the lens cover on the iPhone 7 family. Despite rumors for many years to the contrary, the investment into Corning suggests that Apple may not shift to sapphire screens for any imminent iPhones.
On May 3, in an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the creation of the fund. Other than Friday's award, few hard details are known about the fund.
"We're really proud to do it," Cook said. "By doing that we can be the ripple in the pond, because if we can create many manufacturing jobs, those manufacturing jobs create more jobs around them."
The fund is in addition to Apple's $1 billion commitment to SoftBank's Vision Fund. The Vision Fund is a $100 billion pool created to accelerate the development of technology around the world, with $50 billion earmarked for U.S. companies.
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51 Comments
Glad to see Apple finally putting out a little PR to show it does indeed create jobs in the U.S. Such a large corporation cannot help but be responsible for thousands of jobs. But that won’t silence the critics of course. This whole “bring manufacturing back to the U.S.” is a sham. Low skilled workers here have no future except for low wage service jobs. It’s also why we’re seeing the push for artificially regulated minimum wages and a resurgence of idea of guaranteed income in which taxpayers will pay you a decent salary to sit on your ass all day long and play Candy Crush on your free smartphone with unlimited data. By the way, I don’t know the answer to the problem of unskilled labor but the educational system sure hasn’t helped.
Interesting. I'm seeing a trend here. Trump gathers tech leaders together who jointly tell him that jobs are not coming 'back to America'...because 'infrastructure!' So Trump says "OK, but you gotta do something to merit a tax holiday for your offshore cash"
Apple: "Right, we'll invest in the future by supporting US companies and emerging technology"
"Corning is a great example of a supplier that has continued to innovate and they are one of Apple's long-standing suppliers. This partnership started 10 years ago with the very first iPhone, and today every customer that buys an iPhone or iPad anywhere in the world touches glass that was developed in America. We're extremely proud of our collaboration over the years and we are investing further with Corning who has such a rich legacy of innovative manufacturing practices."
As a non US customer I'm missing something like "Corning is our supplier because their product is the best". Otherwise Apple should use the alkali aluminosilicate glass from whoever is the best.
I'm glad for this just because its Corning. I live and work very close to Corning, NY which is where Corning, Inc's world headquarters are and its research facilities where Gorilla Glass is developed. Corning, Inc keeps this area alive. If they left, this area would instantly die....its already kind of a dying area (Southern Tier of NY). I applaud Apple for doing this.
By the way yes, I realize this money is going to Kentucky where Gorilla glass is manufactured, but its the partnership as a whole I'm talking about. Corning is now doing quite well with not only its Gorilla Glass line, but also its other things it engineers and manufacturers.