According to Omdia, Apple will purchase 172 million flexible OLED panel. According to the research agency, Apple will get these panels from Samsung, LG, and BOE. Out of the 172 million panels, 106 million will be for the new iPhone 13.
Chinese display manufacturer, BOE, has been trying to enter into Apple’s supply chain for a while. Over the past few months, the company has failed to enter Apple’s supply chain multiple times. As of May this year, the company failed to get approval from Apple.
According to Omdia, Apple will purchase 172 million flexible OLED panel. According to the research agency, Apple will get these panels from Samsung, LG, and BOE. Out of the 172 million panels, 106 million will be for the new iPhone 13.
Specifically, BOE will provide 9 million OLED screens for the Apple iPhone 12 Pro this year. The panels for the Apple iPhone 13 Pro are still in the certification process. These panels will commence mass production in the fourth quarter of 2021.
In addition, we can also see that the Apple iPhone 13 Pro series will use an LTPO backplane. This is a relatively new display technology and only a small number of Android flagships use this technology. The likes of the Samsung Galaxy 21 series, Oppo Find X3 series, the OnePlus 9 series, and a few others use this tech.
The advantage of the LTPO panel is that the refresh rate is better. Furthermore, the refresh rate can automatically adjust according to the display content. This improves the fluency while ensuring that the battery life level will not drop sharply.
According to reports, the iPhone 13 Pro series will support a high refresh rate of 120Hz. For the iPhone whose battery capacity is not “high”, the use of LPTO display technology is inevitable.
BOE STILL HAS SOME WORK TO DO
According to Chinese media, BOE is already testing LPTO panels. However, it appears that the company has a lot of trouble with this technology.
Therefore, whether BOE will eventually be certified to supply the iPhone 13 Pro is still unknown. However, on conventional OLED panels, BOE’s screen display effect has made great progress. Thus, it will not be a surprise that BOE will supply panels for the iPhone 12 Pro.
According to reports, BOE is about to commercialize its self-developed hexagonal crystal screen arrangement technology. This pixel arrangement technology is similar to the diamond arrangement technology of LG and Samsung. It can reduce the loss of OLED panel PPI (pixel density) and obtain a better display effect.
This diamond array from BOE is significant because LG and Samsung have a monopoly on this technology. The first smartphone to use BOE’s hexagonal crystal screen arrangement technology will be the Huawei P50 Pro+. In order to be able to enter the iPhone supply chain, BOE’s for the iPhone 12 Pro will also likely use this pixel arrangement technology.
Originally published at Giz China