Apple’s efforts to diversify the iPhone 14 display supply clash with reality
Apple will be getting just 20 million iPhone display panels from the Chinese screen maker BOE instead of the 50 million it was hoping for, warned the CEO of UBI Research at the Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) Settlement Seminar in Gangnam, Seoul.
Not only will all the expensive LTPO OLED screens with variable refresh rate for the iPhone 14 Pro series go to the Samsung-LG duopoly, but the cheap LTPS screens for the iPhone 14 and 14 Max will mostly be made by the Korean companies which charge a rather hefty premium, with BOE picking up the slack.
Mr. Lee Choong-hoon claims that out of the total 238 million iPhone units that UBI expects Apple to ship this year, Samsung Display will gran the lion’s 137.65 million units share, or two thirds of the total, followed by LG with 53.15 million and BOE with only 20 million units.
This leaves BOE with just 9% share in the iPhone screen supply chain, not materially higher than last year and indicates a failure in Apple’s efforts to stray away from more expensive OLED panel suppliers.
BOE just doesn’t have the technology and production expertise just yet to meet Apple’s quality and quantity demands. Earlier this year BOE was caught altering the iPhone 13 display designs of its own volition due to component supply shortages and Apple put its shipments on ice until it rights that wrong.
For now, Apple seems to be stuck with Samsung and to a lower extent LG as the only companies that can deliver the OLED screen technology it wants in the numbers and with the refresh rate, color reproduction, and brightness it needs for its high-end iPhones, not that this precludes it from enviable profit margins still.