04 August, 2017
Apparently, OLED panels for Apple are mainly fabricated in this foundry and full-scale production is set to start at the end of this month. They will allow Samsung's monthly OLED capacity for iPhone screens to increase from "just" 15,000 sheets to a massive 105,000 sheets!
Samsung invested 9.8 trillion won (US$ billion) in the A3 plant a year ago that produces an additional 300,000 OLED sheets for Samsung Electronics and some Chinese handset makers. While amount of its annual plant and equipment investment used to be between $3.55 billion and $4.44 billion (4 trillion KRW and 5 trillion KRW), Samsung Display invested doubled its average annual investment past year by investing $8.69 billion (9.8 trillion KRW).
Samsung Display partially produces flexible OLED panels along with rigid OLED panels at its A2 line. In the first half of this year, another 8.7 trillion won was poured into the plant. Operating at 100% with 100% yield, Samsung could make 124 million 6-inch panels and 130-million 5.8-inch panels per year. But due to Apple's stiff technology requirements, sources said, the yield rate has been lowered to some 60 percent, as compared to 80 percent for Samsung Electronics. Of course, any information that doesn't come straight from Apple or Samsung Display should be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism, but the fact that this was casually mentioned in an article with an entirely different angle makes us wonder.
Samsung, the exclusive OLED manufacturer for iPhone 7, likely will split orders with LG in future years.
Apple OLED panels are to be manufactured in the same workshop.
Apple will reportedly spend approximately $2.7 billion for exclusivity over LG Display's new OLED production facility. The usual iPhone production hovers around 200 million units, which would put the iPhone 8 at only 40% of total iPhones (Apple is still reportedly planning to introduce two updated "iPhone 7s" and "iPhone 7s Plus" models).
