In a bid to gradually shift its dependency from OLED display-making partners Samsung, BOE and LG, Apple is said to adopt microLED panels for its entire product line soon. The tech giant is likely to move from organic light-emitting diode to micro light-emitting diode display technology. The Cupertino-based company also mulls releasing an iPhone with a microLED display in the future, says a report by supply chain publication DigiTimes.
The microLED display technology would allow for higher brightness, decreased power consumption, improved contrast ratio and other benefits as compared to the current iPhone lineup that uses OLED displays.
The DigiTimes report also noted that the next iteration of the Apple Watch Ultra would be the first device from Apple to make use of microLED technology.
This development comes after Apple pulled orders from Chinese display-making giant Beijing Oriental Electronics or BOE in March after the latter could not fix the issues it was facing in making the iPhone 15 display. Displays made by China's BOE have not met the quality requirements due to which Apple's plan to reduce dependency on Samsung will not work for now, a report by 9to5Mac said, citing Korean publication The Elec.
BOE's OLED panel production has inconsistent yields and there's a prominent light leakage around the cutout for the Dynamic Island that will be present in iPhone 15. As part of its plan to reduce its dependency on Samsung, Cupertino, California-based Apple has been looking to diversify its OLED supply chain by taking the Chinese OLED maker BOE into the mix which was earlier dominated by Samsung and LG only, with the former taking the bulk of orders.
Meanwhile, Samsung became the top OLED display provider for last year's iPhone 14 lineup. Samsung Display is supplying more than 70 per cent of the OLED panels that Apple uses for its current iPhone 14 series, which is due to the company’s dominant position helped by setbacks of rivals LG Display and BOE.